■W'SU] JUFIE-
HANDBOOK
OF
ART CULTURE.
1. Botany of 13th Century.
(Apple-tree and Cyclamen.)
ART CULTURE:
A HAND-BOOK
OF
ART TECHNICALITIES AND CRITICISMS,
SELECTED FKOIX
THE WOKKS OF JOHN RUSKIN,
-AND ARRANGED AND SUPPLEMENTED BX
EE Y. W. H. PL ATT,
FOE, THE USE OF
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES;
TOGETHER WITH A NEW GLOSSARY OF ART TERM'S, AND AN ALPHA-
BETICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF ARTISTS.
NEW YORK:
JOHN WILEY & SON,
15 ASTOR PLACE.
1*873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
By JOHN WILEY & SON,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington.
Chas. E. Wilbour,
Printer and Bookbinder,
205-213 East 12 th St.,
NEW YORK,
PREFACE.
This Handbook of Art-Laws is an expansion of system-
atized notes of Kuskin's voluminous criticisms on art, cited
for parallel reading, by the Editor of this book, to his Art-
Lecture classes. It is now published with the hope that
the student may be led by its help, as a grammar of art
principles and technicalities, to a more thorough acquaint-
ance with Ruskin's original, eloquent, and exhaustive
works.
Sustained by the vast wealth accumulated by commerce
and speculative enterprises, art and foreign travel have
become prominent and very general enjoyments of our
times ; and because uninformed thousands annually rush
through Europe, utterly unable to appreciate the wonder-
ful creations of a past civilization everywhere around
them, Art-Culture has been made as important, in a senior
course of study, and as a preparation for intelligent travel,
as a knowledge of history and modern languages. To
meet this increasing educational necessity, this volume
has been prepared as a text-book of highest authority.
CONTENTS OF THE ANALYSIS.
INTRODUCTION.
PAINTING.
PART I. — Subject Art.
Page
Chapter I. — The Value of Art 1
" II— Schools of Art 4
" III. — Art Language, Thought, and Laws 25
^ " IV.— Lines 30
" V. — Composition... 49
" VI.— Tone 104
" VII.— Light 120
" VIII.— Color 146
" IX. — Chiaroscuro 194
PART II. —Landscape Art.
Chapter I. — Perspective 207
" II. — Classes of Landscape...... 223
" III.— The Motive of Landscape 229
" IV. — Sketching from Nature 243
11 V. — Perfectness of Sketching 286
" VI.— Foregrounds 302
" VII.— Backgrounds 322
" VIII.— Distance and Outline 336
" IX. — Distance and the Focus of the Eye 338
' ' X. — Distance and the Power of the Eye 345
" XI. — Distance from Spectator affecting Colour of
Picture 361
Sculpture
SCULPTURE.
367
vi
CONTENTS.
ARCHITECTURE .
Page
Chapter I. — History of Architecture 407
" II.— Value of the Laws of Architecture 410
" III.— Schools of Architecture 412
" IV.— Gothic Architecture 418
" V.— Composition 428
ANALYSIS OF THE CONTENTS.
Page
Preface iii
Contents of the Analysis v
Analysis of the Contents vii
INTRODUCTION.
1. Kightness of work, xix
2. Faults of a picture xix
3. Work represents the worker xx
4. Distinction between art and manufacture xxi
5. Art an infection or an education xxi
6. Moral character the foundation of art xxii
7. Art gifts the result of the morality of generations xxii
8. Lovely art springs from virtue xxiii
9. 10. Turner's love of nature xxiv
PAINTING.
Part I.— Subject Art.
CHAPTER I. — Value of Art,
■1. Art — its essential value 1
2. Art related to civilization 1
CHAPTER II.— Schools of Art.
1. The Athenian, Florentine, and Venetian 4
2. Errors of art schools 7.. 6
3. Confusion of art schools 8
4. Eclectic school fails to correct 11
5. Rank of art schools :
a. From a love of the beautiful 17
b. From character of subject 18
G. Corruption of art schools 19
7. The Great Masters of the schools 20
viii
CONTENTS.
Page
CHAPTER III. — Art Language, Thought, and Laws.
1. Art language is technicality 25
2. Art thought is feeling 26
3. Difficulty in fixing limit 26
4. Difference between decorative and expressive language 27
5. Instance in the Dutch and early Italian schools . 28
6. Art laws and art intuitions 29
CHAPTER IV.— Lines.
1. Abstract beauty of lines 30
2. Curved lines unequal in beauty 31
3. Law of curvatures 33
4. Law of curvatures . 34
5. Law of curvatures 34
6. Law of curvatures 35
7. Beauty of curvature decided by experience 36
8. Reason of delightfulness of curves 36
9. Superiority of curves over right lines 37
10. Nature's mode of producing curves 38
11. Nature's mode of producing curves 39
12. Nature's mode of producing curves 39
13. Nature's mode of producing curves 39
14. Nature varies her curves infinitely 40
15. Illustrations in the ivy leaf 40
16. Contrasts and unity of curves . 41
17. Curves in mouldings and traceries 42
18. Ornaments to imitate nature 44
CHAPTER V. — Composition.
1. Law of Principality 49
2. Law of Repetition 52
3. Law of Continuity 55
4. Law of Curvature 59
5. Law of Radiation 65
6. Law of Contrast 77
7. Law of Interchange 83
8. Law of Consistency — breadth 84
9. Law of Harmony 86
10. Law of Help 98
11. Law of Grouping 99
I. Principal Laws 99
CONTENTS. ix
Page
II. Number of Figures 100
III. Principal and subordinate groups 101
IV. Attitude of Figures 101
V. Form of Group 101
1 . Angular :
a. Diagonal ; b. Pyramidal ; c. Diamond 102
2. Circular 102
3. Horizontal 103
CHAPTEK VI.— Tone.
1. Meanings of the word " Tone." — First, the right relation of ob-
jects in shadow to the principal light 104
2. Secondly, the quality of colour by which it is felt to owe part of
its brightness to the hue of light upon it 104
3. Difference between tone and aerial perspective 105
4. Middle tints of old masters perfect 105
5. Their middle tints and darkness 106
6. General falsehood of such a system 107
7. Turner's principle 108
8. N. Poussin's "Phocion" 109
9. Turner's "Mercury and Argus " 109
10. The "Datur Hora Quieti" 110
11. The second sense of the word " Tone " Ill
12. Difference between Turner's drawings and paintings Ill
13. Not owing to want of power over 'materials Ill
14. Two distinct qualities of light 112
15. Falsehoods by Titian in light 113
16. Turner refuses such means 114
17. But gains in essential truth by the sacrifice 114
18. The second quality of light 115
19. The solecisms of Cuyp 116
20. Turner perfect in the whole — not so much in parts 117
21. Turner's power in uniting a number of tones 118
22. Eecapitulation 119
CHAPTER Nil.— Light.
V. Nature's light unapproachable 120
2. White paper appears darker than blue sky 121
3. Reason for this 122
4. The white of the clouds compared with the paper and the blue
of the sky 123
X CONTENTS.
Page
5. Heaven-light and earth-darkness compared 123
6. How this should be studied 124
7. Earth is bright when seen right 125
8. The colours of the earth 126
9. The colour of landscape and white paper compared 127
10. The colour of shadows 127
11. True scales of contrasted light and shade. — Nature, Rembrandt,
Turner, and Veronese's light 129
12. These as to contrasts of colour 130
13. These and Da Vinci compared 131
14. The wet ink test — Veronese's principle 132
15. The carmine spot test 133
16. The Venetian rule of colour 134
17. Some truths must be chosen and represented, others must be
excluded 135
18. The masters who choose light — the masters who choose colour. 135
19. Advantages of those who choose colour over the others 136
20. First advantage, illustrated by drapery by Da Vinci in the
Louvre 137
21. This method peculiar to the Roman and Florentine schools. . . . 138
22. How to study colour and shade 139
23. The third advantage of the colourists 140
24. The sanctity of colour revealed 142
CHAPTER VIII.— Colour.
I. Importance of colour 146
II. Colour-science 151
A. — Colours classified.
B. — Colours modified.
C. — Colours characterized.
D. — Colours harmonized.
1. Harmony of Analogy 151
2. Harmony of Contrasts t 435
III. Colour- Art 152
1. Truth of colouring 152
2. Ideality of colouring 152
3. Force of colouring 153
4. Balance of colour , 153
5. Gradation of colour 154
a. Gradation in nature 154
b. How can this gradation be effected ? 155
c. Colours change in gradation 156
CONTENTS. Xi
Page
d. Three processes of gradation 157
A. — Mixing while colours are wet 157
B. — Laying one colour over another 158
C. — Breaking one colour over another 160
6. Tone of colour 162
First, preciousness of white 162
Secondly, conspicuousness of black 162
Black as used by Velasquez 163
Thirdly, accordant and discordant colours 164
Fourthly, colour and form 165
Fifthly, colour and distance 166
IV. Colourists 168
1. Colourists as to shadows 168
2. Colourists as to light 169
V. Turner's truth of colour 171
1. The colour of G. Poussin's " La Riccia " 171
2. As compared with the actual scene 171
3. Turner is himself inferior in brilliancy to nature 173
4. Impossible colours of Salvator, Titian 174
5. Poussin, Claude 175
6. Turners translation of colour 177
7. Nature's brilliancy often unapproachable 178
8. Observers often incredulous as to this 179
9. Colour of the Napoleon 181
10. Necessary discrepancy between the attainable bril-
liancy of colour and light 182
11. Less in Turner than in other colourists 182
12. Its great extent in a landscape attributed to Rubens.. 183
13. Turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid colour 184
14. The basis of grey, under all his vivid hues 186
15. The variety and fulness even of his most simple tones 186
16. Following the infinite and unapproachable variety of
nature 187
17. His dislike of purple, and fondness for the opposition
of yellow. Nature in this respect 188
18. His early works false in colour 189
19. His drawings invariably perfect 190
20. The subjection of his system of colour to that of
chiaroscuro 190
CHAPTER IX.— Chiaroscuro.
1. No particular effects of light to be examined 194
Xii CONTENTS.
Page
2. Distinctness of shadows chief means of expressing vividness of
light 195
3. Total absence of such distinctness in the works of the Italian
school 196
4. And partial absence in that of the Dutch 196
5. Turner's perfection in this respect 197
6. The effect of his shadows upon the light 199
7. The distinction holds good between almost all the works of the
ancient and modern schools 199
8. Second great principle of chiaroscuro. Both high light and
deep shadow are used in equal quantity, and only in points.. 201
9. Writers on art disagree as to this 202
10. And consequent misguiding of the student 202
11. The great value of a simple chiaroscuro 203
12. The sharp separation of Nature's lights from her middle tint . . 204
13. The truth of Turner 205
Part II.— Landscape Art.
CHAPTER I.— Perspective.
1. Great painters do not study it as a science 207
2. First principles of perspective 209
3. Placing of the sight-point, &c 213
a. The Sight-point 213
b, The Sight-line 214
G. The Station -line. . 214
d. The Station-point 215
4. The general placing and scale of the picture 219
CHAPTER II.— Glasses of Landscape.
1. Heroic, Classical, Pastoral, Contemplative. 223
2. Spurious landscapes 224
3. Relation of figures _and landscape 225
4. Emotion essential to all pictures 225
5. Two opposite errors , 227
CHAPTER III. — The Motive of Landscape.
1. All great compositions have a leading emotional purpose 229
2. The motive of the " Rietz, near Saumur " 229
3. The time of this picture 230
4. Horizontal and curved lines express its motive 230
CONTENTS. Xiii
Page
5. Radiating lines and motive 232
6. Buildings and the motive , 232
7. The people and the motive 233
8. The "Fall of Schaffhausen " analyzed 233
9. Action and the motive 234
10. Composition g-rows out of the motive 234
11. Turner's use of details 236
12. The form and group — incidental remarks 236
13. Group of leaves , 237
14. All details must harmonize 238
15. Nothing should be in a picture that does not help its purpose. . 240
CHAPTER IV '.—Sketching from Nature.
1. Lines of foliage 243
2. Lines of trees and boughs, &c 244
3. Lines indicative of action in other things 248
4. Light and shade drawing 250
5. Tinted drawings 254
6. Four different ways of working from nature 256
7. Choice of subject , 260
8. Laws of leaf and tree drawing 265
First, good and bad artists distinguished by observing organic
law 269
Secondly, to show individuality in leaves, clouds, &c, marks
the great master 269
Lastly, the mystery of indistinctness 273
9. Modes of representing water 277
a. Reflections or pictures in the water 277
b. Lines of disturbance 278
c. Shadows on or beneath the water 279
d. Colour of water and objects reflected 281
10. Clouds 282
CHAPTER V. — Perfectness of Sketcliing.
1. The reserve or limit of a sketch 286
2. Perfect sketching is thorough but not complete 286
3. Sketching a means, not an end 287
4. Classes of sketches of true painters. — Experimental 288
5. Determinant 288
6. Commemorative 289
xiv
CONTENTS.
Page
7. Sketches as memorandum 289
8. Turner's habit 291
9. His liberty with the topography of Lausanne as to its castle . . 293
10. The same as to the spires , 293
11. The same as to neighbouring hills 293
12. The same as to trees, &c 294
13. How he notes a sandstone cliff , . . . . 294
14. The rapidity of his work . . 295
15. The certainty of his sketch 295
16. Have a purpose before sketching 295
17. Colour sketches 296
18. This the Venetian way 297
19. Amount of ground colours not important to a great painter . . . 298
20. The whole picture must be imagined before sketched 299
21. The mind must be calm 300
22. High qualities only form a high artist 301
23. No false person can paint 301
CHAPTER VI. — Foregrounds.
A. Foregrounds of rock and soil 302
1. Rocks drawn by the ancients 302
2. Salvator's limestone foregrounds 302
3. Salvator's acute angles 303
4. Light and shade of rocks in nature 304
5. Salvator confused both 305
6. Ancients expressed no fissure or splintering 305
7. Instances in particular pictures 305
8. Stanfield's works 306
9. Opposed to Salvator's. . . 307
10. The rocks of Harding 307
11. The ancient foregrounds of loose soil 308
12. Loose soil foregrounds may be beautiful 308
13. The ground of Teniers 309
14. Importance of these minor points 310
15. Observance of them denotes the master 311
16. Ground of Cuyp 311
17. Ground of Claude 312
18. Weakness of Claude 313
19. Compared with Turner. 313
20. Turner's foreground 314
21. Geological structure of his rocks 315
22. Their curved surfaces and fractured edges 315
CONTENTS. XV
Paye
23. Their perfect unity 310
24. Their drawing tells their geological history 310
'25. The foreground of Llanthony 316
26» Turner's drawing of weathered stones 317
27. Turners complicated foreground 318
28. And of loose soil 319
29. The ideal foregrounds of the Academy ,. 319
30. The lesson to be derived from all 320
B. The botanical foregrounds of the ancients 320
CHAPTER VII.— Backgrounds.
1. Conventional or mediasval 322
2. Imitative backgrounds , 323
3. Light backgrounds 330
4. Backgrounds of historical painters 335
CHAPTER VIII.— Distance,
1. Distance and outline 336
CHAPTER IX.
Distance and Indistinctness as dependent on the focus of the eye.
1. Distance attained by drawing, not hue 338
2. Objects at different distances not seen at once 339
3. Especially such as are both comparatively near 339
4. Foreground or distance must be sacrificed 340
5. Ancient masters failing in this, failed in distance 341
6. Modern artists succeeded in this 341
7. EspeciaUy Turner 343
8. Turner's figure drawing justified 343
CHAPTER X.
Distance and Indistinctness as dependent on the power of the eye.
1. Objects retiring from the eye indistinct 345
2. This causes confusion but not annihilation of details 345
3. Instances in various objects .' 346
4. Nature never vacant and never distinct 347
5. The old masters either distinct or vacant 348
6. Instances from Nicholas Poussin 348
7. From Claude 349
8. And Caspar Poussin 350
xvi
CONTENTS.
Page
9. Landscape painting to be full and finished 351
10. Breadth is not vacancy 352
11. Turner's fulness and mystery 353
12. Further illustrations in architectural drawing \ . . . 354
13. In near objects as well as distances 355
14. Vacancy and falsehood of Canaletto 356
15. Still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds 356
16. Space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and vacancy. 357
17. Swift execution best secures perfection of details 358
18. Finish more necessary to landscape than to historical subjects.. 358
19. Recapitulation 359
CHAPTER XI.
Distance and the colour of a painting from its position.
1. Colours soft at a distance 361
2. Colour intensified by distance „ 362
3. Every picture has its own necessities of distance 363
SCULPTURE.
1. Definition 367
2. Sculpture and National Life 367
3. Essentia] Principles of Sculpture .• 368
a. The Production of Bossiness j
b. Abstract Beauty of Surface ) " '
4. The Instincts of Sculpture 369
a. The Instinct of Mimicry. 369
b. The Instinct of Idolatry 369
c. The Instinct of Discipline 370
5. Composition of Greek Sculpture 372
a. Likeness 372
b. Rightness 372
c. Masses 373
d. Drapery 374
e. Accessories inadmissible 377
f Grouping 377
g. Lines 378
CONTENTS. XVII
Page
1. Lines of Motive 378
2. Lines of Truth 378
3. Lines of Beauty and Grace 379
4. Lines of Repose 380
7i. Symmetry and Proportion 384
i. Unity 387
/. Variety 388
h. Harmony 389
I. Exaggeration 389
m. Anatomy 390
n. Bas-relief 391
Schools of Sculpture - 393
1. The Greek Yenus and the Italian Venus , 396
2. Greek Sculpture and Florentine Sculpture 398
3. No Passion or Personal Character in Greek Art , )
> 399
Otherwise in Florentine Art )
4. Greek Art with respect to the World 401
a. It is the Root of all Simplicity 401
b. Of all Complexity 402
5. Greeks the origin of all broad, mighty, calm concep-
tion, and also of all that is delicate and tremulous . . 403
AKCHITECTUEE.
CHAPTER I.
The General History of Architecture 407
CHAPTER IL
The Value of the Laws of Architecture 410
CHAPTER III.
The Schools of Architecture .• 412
A. Greek : Lintel Architecture 413
1. The Doric ' 414
2. The Ionic 414
3. The Corinthian 414
4. The Composite 414.
5. The Tuscan 415
xviii
CONTENTS.
Page
B. Romanesque: Round Arch Architecture 415
1. The Bizantine changed to Arabian G-othic 415
2. The Lombardic changed to Teutonic Gothic 415
C. Gothic : Architecture of the Gable 415
1. General Distinctions 415
2. Tests of Good Gothic 418
First, Steep Gable 418
Second, Gables over principal Doors and Windows. . . 418
Third, Cusped Arches and Foliated Apertures 418
Fourth, Arches carried on true Shafts and Capitals . . 419
3. Gothic flexibility and variety of Gothic Schools 419
4. Aspiration as a law of Gothic Schools 420
1. Towers 421
2. Campaniles . . . 423
3. Spires 424
CHAPTER IY.
Composition 428
1. Law of Principality . . 428
2. Law of Proportion 429
a. No Proportion between equal things 429
b. Must be three Terms 429
c. Proportion Vertical Division _ , 430
3. Law of Masses or Breadth 431
4. Laws of Harmonies 433
General Principle of Contrast 433
Seven Rules of Harmony of Contrast and Analogy 437
Contrast or Form for the Mountain Villa 440
Analogy or Assimilation of Form with Landscape 443
Colour of Building and Landscape 448
A new Glossary of Art Terms 451
An Alphabetical and Chronological List of Artists, with critical
references 471
INTRODUCTION.
In different places of my writings, and through many
years of endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted
on rightness in work, and on its connection with virtue of
character, in so many partial ways, that the impression
left on the reader's mind — if, indeed, it was ever impress-
ed at all — has been confused and uncertain. In begin-
ning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle
(in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be
made plain, if nothing else is : and will try, therefore, to
make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put it into un-
mistakeable words. And, first, here is a very simple state-
ment of it, given lately in a lecture on the Architecture of
the Yalley of the_Somme, which will be better read in
this place than in its incidental connection with my ac-
count of the porches of Abbeville.
2. I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the ex-
pression, " by what faults " this Gothic architecture fell.
We continually speak thus of works of art. We talk of
their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do
we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the
merits of a piece of stone ?
The faults of a work of art are the faults of its work-
man, and its virtues his virtues.
Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man,
and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man.
A foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly ;
a virtuous one, beautifully ; and a viciou*3 one, basely. If
XX
INTRODUCTION.
stone work is well put together, it means that a thought-
ful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an
honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament,
it means that its carver was too greedy of jDleasure ; if too
little, that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the
like. So that when once you have learned how to spell
these most precious of all legends, — pictures and build-
ings,— you may read the characters of men, and of na-
tions, in their art, as in a mirror ; — nay, as in a micro-
scope, and magnified a hundredfold ; for the character
becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all
its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a
microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection ; for
a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent him-
self to you, every other way ; but he cannot in his work :
there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he
likes, all that he sees, — all that he can do, — his imagina-
tion, his affections, his perseverance, his impatience, his
clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the work is
a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider ; if a honey-
comb, by a bee ; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm,
and a nest wreathed by a bird ; and a house built by
a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and ignobly, if he is
ignoble.
And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made
thing is good or bad, so is the maker of it.
3. You all use this faculty of judgment more or less,
whether you theoretically admit the principle or not.
Take that floral gable ; * you don't suppose the man who
built &tonehenge could have built that, or that the man
who built that, would have built Stonehenge % Do you
* The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west end of
Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and en-
riched with a border T)f " twisted eglantine."
INTRODUCTION.
xxi
think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of
filigree work \ or that Michael Angelo would have spent
his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out ? You
will find in the end, that no man coidd have done it but
exactly the man who did it ; and by looking close at it,
you may, if you know your letters, read precisely the man-
ner of man he was.
4. Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason.
Of all facts concerning art, this is the one most necessary
to be known, that, while manufacture is the work of
hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit of man ;
and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it : and by what-
ever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same
vice or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is
born of evil begets evil ; and that which is born of valour
and honour, teaches valour and honour. All art is either
infection or education. It must be one or other of these.
5. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one
of which understanding is the most precious, and denial
the most deadly. It is written in the history of all great
nations ; it is the one sentence always inscribed on the
steps of their thrones ; the one concordant voice in which
they speak to us out of their dust.
All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure
and beautiful animal race, with intense energy and im-
agination. They live lives of hardship by choice, and by
grand instinct of manly discipline : they become fierce and
irresistible soldiers ; the nation is always its own army,
and their king, or chief head of government, is always
their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or
Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or
Dandolo, or Frederick the Great : — Egyptian, Jew, Greek,
Roman, German, English, French, Venetian, — that is in-
violable law for them all ; their king must be their first
soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then,
xxii
INTRODUCTION.
after their great military period, comes the domestic
period ; in which, without betraying the discipline of war,
they add to their great soldiership the delights and posses-
sions of a delicate and tender home-life : and then, for all
nations, is the time of their perfect art, which is the fruit,
the evidence, the reward of their national ideal of charac-
ter, developed by the finished care of the occupations of
peace. That is the history of all true art that ever was,
or can be : palpably the history of it, — unmistakeably, —
written on the forehead of it in letters of light, — in
tongues of fire, by which the seal of virtue is branded as
deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal of
crime. But always, hitherto, after the great period, has
followed the days of luxury, and pursuit of the arts for
pleasure only. And all has so ended.
6. The foundation of art is in moral character. Of
course art-gift and amiability of disposition are two differ-
ent things ; a good man is not necessarily a painter, nor
does an eye for colour necessarily imply an honest mind.
But great art implies the union of both powers : it is the
expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is
not there, we can have no art at all ; and if the soul — and
a right soul too — is not there, the art is bad, however dex-
terous.
7. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only
the result of the moral character of generations. A bad
woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of
voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she
can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of
laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act,
every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature,
face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of
invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human
conduct, renders, after a certain number of generations,
human art possible ; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little
INTRODUCTION.
xxiii
m a one ; and persistent vicious living and following of plea-
sure render, after a certain number of generations, all art
impossible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of
the laws of nature ; and mistake, in a nation, the reward
of the virtue of its sires for the issue of its own sins. The
time of their visitation will come, and that inevitably ; for,
it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes,
the children's teeth are set on edge. And for the indi-
vidual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I
. said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let
his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height
by the schools of a great race of men ; and it is still but a
tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul ; and
the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on
a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may
not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but
learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become
transparent, and you shall see through them the death's
shape, or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a
cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet.
8. Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find
it true, and that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is
rooted in virtue, so it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic
in its own nature. It is often didactic also in actually ex-
pressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael Angelo's, Durer's,
and hundreds more ; but that is not its special function, —
it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful ; but beautiful
with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full
of myths that can be read only with the heart.
For instance, at this moment there is open beside me
as I write, a page of Persian manuscript, wrought with
wreathed azure and gold, and soft green, and violet, and
ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure resplendence. It
is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight
them ; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his
xxiv
INTRODUCTION.
head ; but not much more. It is not didactic art, but its
author was happy : and it will do the good, and the harm,
that mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is an early
Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken about two
miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont
Blanc in the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond
the waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty veil of
Athena's weaving : a faint light of morning, peaceful ex-
ceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behind the
Yoirons, increases into soft amber along the slope oi the
Saleve, and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm
fields of its summit, between the folds of a white cloud
that rests upon the grass, but rises, high and tower-like,
into the zenith of dawn above.
9. There is not as much colour in that low amber light
upon the hill-side as there is in the palest dead leaf. The
lake is not blue, but gray in mist, passing into deep shadow
beneath the Yoirons' pines ; a few dark clusters of leaves,
a single white flower — scarcely seen — are all the gladness
given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of
the eastern manuscript would give colour enough for all
the red that is in Turner's entire drawing. For the mere
pleasure of the eye, there is not so much in all those lines
of his, throughout the entire landscape, as in half an inch
square of the Persian's page. What made him take plea-
sure in the low colour that is only like the brown of a dead
leaf? in the cold gray of dawn — in the one white flower
among the rocks — in these — and no more than these?
10. He took pleasure in them because he had been bred
among English fields and hills ; because the gentleness of
a great race Avas in his heart, and its powers of thought in
his brain ; because he knew the stories of the Alps, and of
the cities at their feet ; because he had read the Homeric
legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and
the givers of dew to the fields ; because he knew the faces
INTRODUCTION.
XXV
of the crags, and the imagery of the passionate mountains,
as a man knows the face of his friend ; because he had in
him the wonder and sorrow concerning life and death,
which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days
of its first sea kings ; and also the compassion and the joy
that are woven into the innermost fabric of every great
imaginative spirit, born now in countries that have lived by
the Christian faith with any courage or truth. And the
picture contains also, for us, just this which its maker had in
him to give ; and can convey it to us, just so far as we are
of the temper in which it must be received. It is didactic
if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart,
it will make more pure ; the thoughtful, more thoughtful.
It has in it no words for the reckless or the base.
11. As I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of
my life, — and both have been many and great, — that does
not rise up against me, and take away my joy, and shorten
my power of possession, of sight, of understanding. And
every past effort of my life, every gleam of rightness or
good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this
art, and its vision. So far-as I can rejoice in, or interpret
either, my power is owing to what of right there is in me.
I dare to say it, that, because through all my life I have
desired good, and not evil ; because I have been kind to
many ; have wished to be kind to all ; have wilfully injur-
ed none ; and because I have loved much, and not selfish-
ly ; therefore the morning light is yet visible to me on
those hills, and you, who read, may trust my thought and
word in such work as I have to do for you ; and you will
be glad afterwards that you have trusted them.
12. Yet remember, — I repeat it again and yet again, —
that I may for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly
clear : — the inherited art-gift must be there, as well as the
life, in some poor measure, or rescued fragment, right.
Queen of Air, Chap. iiL
ART CULTURE.
PAET I.
PAINTING.
PAINTING.
I.— Subject Aet.
CHAPTEE I.
VALUE OE AET.
1. That art is valuable or otherwise, only as it ex-
presses the personality, activity, and living perception of
a great human soul. If it have not this, it is worthless.
"Worthless, I mean, as art ; it may be precious in some
other way, but, as art, it is nugatory. Once let this be
well understood among us, and magnificent consequences
will soon follow. Let me repeat it in other terms, so that
I may not be misunderstood. All art is great, and good,
and true, only so far as it is distinctively the work of
manhood in its entire and highest sense ; that is to say,
not the work of limbs and fingers, but of the soul, aided,
according to her necessities, by the inferior powers ; and
therefore distinguished in essence from all products of
those inferior powers unhelped by the soul. In this high
sense neither Photography nor Topography is art. All
art as mere art is a low and common thing, and what we
indeed respect is not art at all, but instinct or inspiration
expressed by the help of art. 3 S. V. 188.
2. Historically, great success in art is apparently con-
nected with subsequent national degradation. You find,
in the first place, that the nations which possessed a
refined art were always subdued by those who possessed
2
VALUE OF ART.
none : you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede ; the
Athenian by the Spartan ; the Greek by the Roman ; the
Roman by the Goth ; the Burgundian by the Switzer :
but you find beyond this, — that even where no attack by
any external power has accelerated the catastrophe of the
state, the period in which any given people reach their
highest power in art is precisely that in which they appear
to sign the warrant of their own ruin ; and, that from the
moment in which a perfect statue appears in Florence,
a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco in Rome,
from that hour forward, probity, industry and courage
seemed to be exiled from their walls, and they perish in
a sculpturesque paralysis, or a many-coloured corruption.
But even this is not all. As art seems thus, in its deli-
cate form, to be one of the chief promoters of indolence
and sensuality, — so I need hardly remind you, it hitherto
has appeared only in energetic manifestation when it was
in the service of superstition. The four greatest manifes-
tations of human intellect which founded the four princi-
pal kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and
Italian, were developed by the strong excitement of active
superstition in the worship of Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and
the Queen of Heaven. Therefore, to speak briefly, it may
appear very difficult to show that art has ever yet existed
in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school, unless it
was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, or the en-
couragement of vice.
And finally, while art has always thus shown itself ac-
tive in the service of luxury and idolatry, it has also been
strongly directed to the exaltation of cruelty. A nation
which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates
the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but races who
live by depreciation and slaughter nearly always bestow ex-
quisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.
Queen of Air, Lect. 1.
VAI4JE OF AET.
3
Does it not seem then, on all these counts, more than
questionable whether art-culture promises any good %
Wherever art is practised for its own sake, and the delight
of the workman is in what he does and produces, in-
stead of what he interprets or exhibits, — there art has an
influence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart, and
it issues, if long pursued, in the destruction of both in-
tellectual power and moral principle / whereas art, de-
voted humbly and self -forgetfully to the clear statement
on record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful
and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and
salvation. Queen of Air, Lect. 1.
Now, when you are once well assured of this, you may
logically infer that when Art is occupied in the function
in which she is serviceable, she will herself be strength-
ened by the service ; but when distorted to the deception
or degradation of mankind, she will be herself equally
misled and degraded. Good art, which interprets, rather
than imitates nature, always exalts. In a word, good art
always consists of two things : First, the observation
of fact ; secondly, the manifesting of human design and
authority in the way that fact is told. Great and good
art must unite the two; it cannot exist for a moment but
in their unity ; it consists of the two as essentially as water
consists of oxygen and hydrogen, or marble of lime and
carbonic acid. Queen of Air, Lect. 1.
CHAPTEE II.
SCHOOLS OF AET.
I. There have only yet appeared in the world three
schools of perfect art, — schools, that is to say, that did
their work as well as it seems possible to do it. These are
the Athenian, Florentine, and Venetian.
1. The Athenian proposed to itself the perfect repre-
sentation of the form of the human body. It strove to
do that as well as it could ; it did that as well as it can be
done; and all its greatness was founded upon and in-
volved in that single and honest effort.
2. The Florentine school proposed to itself the perfect
expression of human emotion — the showing of the effects
of passion in the human face and gesture. I call this the
Florentine school, because whether you take Raphael for
the culminating master of expressional art in Italy, or Leo- i
nardo, or Michael Angelo, you will find that the whole
energy of the national effort which produced those masters
had its root in Florence ; not at Urbino or Milan. I say3
then, this Florentine or leading Italian school proposed to
itself human expression for its aim in natural truth; it
strove to do that as well as it could — did it as well as it
can be done — and all its greatness is rooted in that single
and honest effort.
3. Thirdly, The Verietian school proposed the represen-
tation of the effect of colour and shade on all tilings, chiefly
on the human form. It tried to do that as well as it could
— did it as well as it can be done — and all its greatness is
founded on that single and honest effort.
For illustration: There's the (so-called) "Theseus" of
SCHOOLS OF ART.
5
the Elgin marbles. That represents the whole end and
aim of the Athenian school — the natural form of the hu-
man body. All their conventional architecture — their
graceful shaping and painting of pottery — whatsoever
other art they practised — was dependent for its greatness
on this sheet-anchor of central aim : true shape of living
man.
Then take for your type of the Italian school, Raphael's
"Disputa del Sacramento;" that will be an accepted type
by everybody, and will involve no possibly questionable
points : the Germans will admit it ; the English Academi-
cians will admit it ; and the English Purists and Pre-Ra-
phaelites will admit it. Well, there you have the truth of
human expression proposed as an aim. That is the way
people look when they feel this or that — when they have
this or that other mental character: are they devotional,
thoughtful, affectionate, indignant or inspired? are they
prophets, saints, priests, or kings ? then — whatsoever is
truly thoughtful, affectionate, prophetic, priestly, kingly —
that the Florentine school tried to discern and show : that
they have discerned and shown ; and all their greatness is
first fastened in their aim at this central truth — the open
expression of the living soul.
Lastly, take Veronese's "Marriage in Cana," in the
Louvre. There you have the most perfect representation
possible of colour, and light, and shade, as they affect the
external aspect of the human form, and its immediate
accessories, architecture, furniture, and dress. This exter-
nal aspect of noblest nature was the first aim of the Vene-
tians, and all their greatness depended on their resolution
to achieve, and their patience in achieving it.
Here, then, are the three greatest schools of the former
wTorld exemplified for you in three well-known works.
The Phidian "Theseus" represents the Greek school pur-
suing the truth of form; the "Disputa" of Raphael the
6
SCHOOLS OF ART.
Florentine school pursuing truth of mental expression;
the "Marriage in Cana" the Venetian school pursuing
the truth of colour and light. Two Paths, 25 et passim.
The perfect unison of expression, as the painter's main
purpose, with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial
power in the details of the work is found only in the old
Pre-Raphaelite periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphael-
ite school. In the works of Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna,
John Belline, and one or two more, these two conditions
of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the knowledge
of those days enabled them to be fulfilled ; and in the
modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to
the uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, I believe,
the most perfect instance of expressional purpose with
technical power which the world has yet produced.
II. Errors of Art Schools. In the Post-Raphaelite period
of ancient art, (such as the period of Claude, Graspar Pous-
sin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael, Hob-
bima, Teniers in his landscapes, P. Potter, and Canal etti
— Editor) and in the spurious high art of modern times,
two broad forms of error divide the schools ; the one con-
sisting in the superseding of expression by technical ex-
cellence, and the other in the superseding of technical
excellence by expression.
1. Superseding expression by technical excellence. — ■
This takes place most frankly, and therefore most innocent-
ly, in the work of the Venetians. They very nearly ignore
expression altogether, directing their aim exclusively to the
rendering of external truths of colour, and form. Paul
Veronese will make the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ
with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any
ordinary servant bringing a ewer to her master, and will
introduce the supper at Emmaus as a background to the
SCHOOLS OF AET.
7
portraits of two children playing with a dog. Of the
wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding we shall
reason in another place ; at present we have to note it
merely as displacing the Venetian work from the highest or
expressional rank of art. But the error is generally made
in a more subtle and dangerous way. The artist deceives
himself into the idea that he is doing all that he can to ele-
vate his subject by treating it under rules of art ; introduc-
ing into it accurate science, and collecting for it the beau-
ties of the (so-called) ideal form ; whereas, he may, in reality,
be all the while sacrificing his subject to his own vanity
or pleasure, and losing truth, nobleness, and impressiveness
for the sake of delightful lines or creditable pedantries.
2. Superseding technical excellence by expression. —
This is usually done under the influence of another kind of
vanity. The artist desires that men should thiuk he has
an elevated soul, affects to despise the ordinary excellence
of art, contemplates with separated egotism the course of
his own imaginations or sensations, and refuses to look
at the real facts round about him, in order that he may
adore at leisure the shadow of himself. He lives in what
he calls tender emotions and lofty aspirations ; which are,
in fact, nothing more than ordinary weaknesses or instincts,
contemplated through a mist of pride. A large range of
German art comes under this head.
A more interesting and respectable form of this error is
fallen into by some truly earnest men, who, finding their
powers not adequate to the attainment of great artistical
excellence, but adequate to rendering, uj3 to a certain
point, the expression of the human countenance, devote
themselves to that object alone, abandoning effort in other
directions, and executing the accessories of their pictures
feebly or carelessly. With these are associated another
group of philosophical painters who supj)ose the artistical
merits of other parts adverse to the expression, as drawing
8
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
the spectator's attention away from it, and who paint in
gray colour, and imperfect light and shade, by way of en-
forcing the purity of their conceptions. Both these classes
of conscientious but narrow-minded artists forget that
colour, if used at all, must be either true or false, and that
what they call chastity, dignity and reserve, is, to the eyes
of any one accustomed to nature, pure, bold, and imper-
tinent falsehood. No man ever despised colour who could
produce it. 3 M. P., 30.
III. Confusion of Art Schools. Our Schools of Art
are confused by the various teaching and various interests
that are now abroad among us. Everybody is talking about
art, and writing about it, and more or less interested in it ;
everybody wants art, and there is not art for everybody,
and few who talk know what they are talking about ;
thus students are led in all variable ways, while there is
only one way in which they can make steady progress, for
true art is always and will be always one. Whatever
changes may be made in the customs of society, whatever
new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures
we may supply, Fine Art must remain what it was two
thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias ; two thousand
years hence, it will be, in all its principles, and in all its
great effects upon the mind of man, just the same.
Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to
the very utmost. There is hut one right way of doing
any given thing required of an artist / there may be a
hundred wrong, deficient, or mannered ways, but there is
only one complete and right way. Whenever two artists
are trying to do the same thing with the same materials,
and do it in different ways, one of them is wrong ; he may
be charmingly wrong, or impressively wrong — various
circumstances in his temper may make his wrong pleas-
anter than any person's right ; it may for him, under his
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
0
given limitations of knowledge or temper, be better perhaps
that he should err in his own way than try for anybody
else's — but for all that his way is wrong, and it is essential
for all masters of schools to know what the right way is,
and what right art is, and to see how simple and how
single all right art has been, since the beginning of it.
But farther, not only is there but one way of doing
things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them,
and that is, seeing the whole of them, without any choice,
or more intense perception of one point than another,
owing to our special idiosyncrasies. Thus, wThen Titian
or Tintoret look at a human being, they see at a glance
the whole of its nature, outside and in ; all that it has of
form, of color, of passion, or of thought ; saintliness, and
loveliness; fleshly body, and spiritual power; grace, or
strength, or softness, or whatsoever other quality, those
men will see to the full, and so paint, that, when narrower
people come to look at what they have done, every one
may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in the
work. The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian ; the
thinker will find thought ; the saint, sanctity ; the colourist,
colour; the anatomist, form ; and yet the picture will never
be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrow-
er people will find their special taste so alone consulted,
as that the qualities which would ensure their gratification
shall be sifted or separated from others ; they are checked
by the presence of the other qualities which ensure the
gratification of other men. Thus, Titian is not soft enough
for the sensualist, Correggio suits him better; Titian is
not defined enough for the formalist, — Leonardo suits him
better ; Titian is not pure enough for the religionist, —
Raphael suits him better; Titian is not polite enough for
the man of the world, — Vandyke suits him better; Titian
is not forcible enough for the lovers of the picturesque, — ■
Rembrandt suits him better. So Correggio is popular
10
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
with a certain set, and Vandyke with a certain set, and
Rembrandt with a certain set. All are great men, but of
inferior stamp, and therefore Yandyke is popular, and
Rembrandt is popular,* but nobody cares much at heart
about Titian; only there is a strange under-current of
everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep
consent of all great men that he is greater than they — the
consent of those who, having sat long enough at his feet,
have found in that restrained harmony of his strength
there are indeed depths of each balanced power more
wonderful than all those separate manifestations in in-
ferior painters: that there is a softness more exquisite
than Correggio's, a purity loftier than Leonardo's, a force
mightier than Rembrandt's, a sanctity more solemn even
than Raff aelle's.
Do not suppose that in saying this of Titian, I am return-
ing to the old eclectic theories of Bologna ; for all those
eclectic theories, observe, were based, not upon an endea-
vour to unite the various characters of nature (which it is
possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which
it is impossible to do. Rubens is not more vigorous than
Titian, but less vigorous; but because he is so narrow-
minded as to enjoy vigour only, he refuses to give the
other qualities of nature, which would interfere with that
vigour and with our perception of it. Again, Rembrandt
is not a greater master of chiaroscuro than Titian ; — he is
a less master, but because he is so narrow-minded as to
enjoy chiaroscuro only, he withdraws from you the splen-
dour of hue which would interfere with this, and gives
you only the shadow in which you can at once feel it.
Now all these specialties have their own charm in their
own way; and there are times when the particular humour
* And Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most
superficial, for those reasons the most popular.
CONTUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. 11
of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness ;
but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing
one instantly takes away the distinctiveness, and therefore
the exact character to be enjoyed in its appeal to a par-
ticular humour in us. Our enjoyment arose from a weak
ness meeting a weakness, from a partiality in the painter
fitting to a partiality in us, and giving us sugar when we
wanted sugar, and myrrh when we wanted myrrh; but
sugar and myrrh are not meat : and when we want meat
and bread, we must go to better men.
TV. The eclectic schools endeavoured to unite these op-
posite partialities and weaknesses. They trained them-
selves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite
opposite exaggerations. That was impossible. They did not
see that the only possible eclecticism had been already ac-
complished ; — the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the
restraint of force, gains higher force ; and by the self-de-
nial of delight, gains higher delight. This you will find
is ultimately the case with every true and right master ;
at first, while we are tyros in art, or before we have ear-
nestly studied the man in question, we shall see little in
him ; or perhaps see, as we think, deficiencies ; we shall
fancy he is inferior to this man in that, and to the other
man in the other ; but as we go on studying him we shall
find that he has got both that and the other ; and both in
a far higher sense than the man who seemed to possess
those qualities in excess. Thus in Turner's lifetime, when
people first looked at him, those who liked rainy weather,
said he was not equal to Coj)ley Fielding ; but those who
looked at- Turner long enough found that he could be
much more wet than Copley Fielding, when he chose. The
people who liked force, said that " Turner was not strong
enough for them; he was effeminate; they liked De Whit,
— nice strong tone ; — or Cox — great, greeny, dark masses
12
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
of colour — solemn feeling of the freshness and depth of
nature ; — they liked Cox — Turner was too hot for them."
Had they looked long enough they would have found that
he had far more force than De Whit, far more freshness
than Cox when he chose, — only united with other ele-
ments ; and that he didn't choose to be cool, if nature had
appointed the weather to be hot. The people who liked
Prout said " Turner had not firmness of hand — he did not
know enough about architecture — he was not picturesque
enough." Had they looked at his architecture long, they
would have found that it contained subtle picturesque-
nesses, infinitely more picturesque than anything of Prout's.
People who liked Callcott said that " Turner was not cor-
rect or pure enough — had no classical taste." Had they
looked at Turner long enough they would have found him
as severe, when he chose, as the greater Poussin ; — Call-
cott, a mere vulgar imitator of other men's high breeding.
And so throughout with all thoroughly great men, their
strength is not seen at first, precisely because they unite,
in due place and measure, every great quality.
Now the question is, whether, as students, we are to
study only these mightiest men, who unite all greatness, or
whether we are to study the works of inferior men, who
present us with the greatness which we particularly like?
That question often comes before me when I see a strong
idiosyncrasy in a student, and he asks me what he should
study. Shall I send him to a true master, who does not
present the quality in a prominent way in which that stu-
dent delights, or send him to a man with whom he has
direct sympathy % It is a hard question. For very curious
results have sometimes been brought out, especially in late
years, not only by students following their own bent, but
by their being withdrawn from teaching altogether. 1 have
just named a very great man in his own field — Prout. We
all know his drawings, and love them : they have a pecu-
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
13
liar character which no other architectural drawings ever
possessed, and which no others can possess, because all
Front's subjects are being knocked down or restored.
(Prout did not like restored buildings any more than I do.)
There will never be any more Prout drawings. Nor could
he have been what he was, or expressed with that mys-
teriously effective touch that peculiar delight in broken aud
old buildings, unless he had been withdrawn from all high.
art influence. You know that Prout was born of poor
parents — that he was educated down in Cornwall ; — and
that, for many years, all the art-teaching he had was his
own, or the fishermen's. Under the keels of the fishing-
boats, on the sands of our southern coasts, Prout learned
all that he needed to learn about art. Entirely by himself,
he felt his way to this particular style, and became the
painter of pictures which I think we should all regret to lose.
It becomes a very difficult question what that man would
have been, had he been brought under some entirely whole-
some artistic influence. He had immense gifts of composi-
tion. I do not know any man who had more power of
invention than Prout, or who had a sublimer instinct in
his treatment of things; but being entirely withdrawn from
all artistical help, he blunders his way to that short-com-
ing representation, which, by the very reason of its short-
coming, has a certain charm we should all be sorry to lose.
And therefore I feel embarrassed when a student comes to
me, in whom I see a strong instinct of that kind : and
cannot tell whether I ought to say to him, " Give up all
your studies of old boats, and keep away from the sea-shore,
and come up to the Royal Academy in London, and look
at nothing but Titian." It is a difficult thing to make up
one's mind to say that. However, I believe, on the whole,
we may wisely leave such matters in the hands of Provi-
dence ; that if we have the power of teaching the right to
anybody, we should teach them the right ; if we have the
14
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
power of showing them the best thing, we should show
them the best thing ; there will always, I fear, be enough
want of teaching, and enough bad teaching, to bring out
very curious erratical results if we want them. So, if we
are to teach at all, let us teach the right thing, and ever the
right thing. There are many attractive qualities incon-
sistent with rightness; — do not let us teach them, — let us
be content to waive them. There are attractive qualities
in Burns, and attractive qualities in Dickens, which neither
of those writers would have possessed if the one had been
educated, and the other had been studying higher nature
than that of cockney London ; but those attractive quali-
ties are not such as we should seek in a school of literature.
If we want to teach young men a good manner of writing,
we should teach it from Shakspeare, — not from Burns ;
from Walter Scott, — and not from Dickens. And I believe
that our schools of painting are at present inefficient in
their action, because they have not fixed on this high
principle what are the painters to whom to point ; nor
boldly resolved to point to the best, if determinable. It is
becoming a matter of stern necessity that they should give
a simple direction to the attention of the student, and that
they should say, " This is the mark you are to aim at ; and
you are not to go about to the print-shops, and peep in, to
see how this engraver does that, and the other engraver
does the other, and how a nice bit of character has been
caught by a new man, and why this odd picture has caught
the popular attention. You are to have nothing to do
with all that; you are not to mind about popular attention
just now ; but here is a thing which is eternally right and
good : you are to look at that, and see if you cannot do
something eternally right and good too."
But suppose you accept this principle : and resolve to
look to some great man, Titian, or Turner, or whomsoever
it may be, as the model of perfection in art ; — then the
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
15
question is, since this great man pursued his art in Yenice,
or in the fields of England, under totally different condi-
tions from those possible to us now — how are you to make
your study of him effective here in Manchester? how bring
it down into patterns, and all that you are called upon as
operatives to produce? how make it the means of your
livelihood, and associate inferior branches of art with this
great art? That may become a serious doubt to you.
You may think there is some other way of producing
clever, and pretty, and saleable patterns than going to
look at Titian, or any other great man.
And that brings me to the question, perhaps the most
vexed question of all amongst us just now, between con-
ventional and perfect art. You know that among
architects and artists there are, and have been almost
always, since art became a subject of much discussion,
two parties, one maintaining that nature should be always
altered and modified, and that the artist is greater than
nature ; they do not maintain, indeed, in words, but they
maintain in idea, that the artist is greater than the Di-
vine Maker of these things, and can improve them ; while
the other party say that he cannot improve nature, and
that nature on the whole should improve him. That is
the real meaning of the two parties, the essence of them ;
the practical result of their several theories being that
the Idealists are always producing more or less formal
conditions of art, and the Realists striving to produce
in all their art either some image of nature, or record
of nature ; these, observe, being quite different things,
the image being a resemblance, and the record, some-
thing which will give information about nature, but not
necessarily imitate it.*
* The portion of the lecture here omitted was a recapitulation of that
part of the previous one which opposed conventional art to natural art.
16
CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS.
* -X- * * * •»
You may separate these two groups of artists more dis-
tinctly in your mind as those who seek for the pleasure of
art, in the relations of its colours and lines, without caring
to convey any truth with it ; and those who seek for the
truth first, and then go down from the truth to the pleasure
of colour and line. Marking those two bodies distinctly
as separate, and thinking over them, you may come to some
rather notable conclusions respecting the mental disposi-
tions which are involved in each mode of study. You will
find that large masses of the art of the world fall definitely
under one or the other of these heads. Observe, pleasure
first and truth afterwards, (or not at all,) as with the Ara-
bians and Indians ; or, truth first and pleasure afterwards,
as with Angelico and all other great European painters.
You will find that the art whose end is pleasure only is pre-
eminently the gift of cruel and savage nations, cruel in tem-
per, savage in habits and conception ; but that the art which
is especially dedicated to natural fact always indicates a
peculiar gentleness and tenderness of mind, and that all
great and successful work of that kind will assuredly be
the production of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men,
large in their views of life, and full of various intellectual
power. And farther, when you examine the men in whom
the gifts of art are variously mingled, or universally
mingled, you will discern that the ornamental, or pleasura-
ble power, though it may be possessed by good men, is not
in itself an indication of their goodness, but is rather, un-
less balanced by other faculties, indicative of violence of
temper, inclining to cruelty and to irreligion. On the
other hand, so sure as you find any man endowed with a
keen and separate faculty of representing natural fact, so
surely you will find that man gentle and upright, full of
nobleness and breadth of thought. I will give you two
instances, the first peculiarly English, and another pecu-
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
17
liarly interesting, because it occurs among a nation not
generally very kind or gentle.
I am inclined to think that, considering all the disad-
vantages of circumstances and education under which his
genius was developed, there was perhaps hardly ever born
a man with a more intense and innate gift of insight into
nature than our own Sir Joshua Reynolds. Considered as
a painter of individuality in the human form and mind,
I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters.
Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler
subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir
Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and
temper ; and when you consider that, with a frightful
conventionality of social habitude all around him, he yet
conceived the simplest types of all feminine and childish
loveliness ; — that in a northern climate, and with gray,
and white, and black, as the principal colours around him,
he yet became a colourist who can be crushed by none,
even of the Venetians ; — and that with Dutch painting
and Dresden china for the prevailing types of art in the
saloons of his day, he threw himself at once at the feet of
the great masters of Italy, and arose from their feet to
share their throne — I know not that in the whole history
of art you can produce another instance of so strong, so
unaided, so unerring an instinct for all that was true,
pure, and noble. Two Paths, Lect. 11.
V. Rank of Art Schools, from a Love of the Beau-
tiful. — Schools of art become higher in exact projxjr-
tion to the degree in which they apprehend and love the
beautiful.
1st Rank. — Thus Angelico, intensely loving all spiritual
beauty, will be of the highest rank.
2d Rank. — Paul Veronese and Correggio, intensely lov-
ing physical and corporeal beauty, of the second rank.
18
RANK OF ART SCHOOLS.
3d Rank.— Albert Durer, Rubens, and in general the
Northern artists, apparently insensible to beauty, and
caring only for truth, whether shapely or not, of the third
rank.
No certain Rank. — Teniers, Salvator and Carravaggio,
and other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank,
or, as we said before, of a certain order in the abyss.
3M. P.,34.
VI. Rank of Art Schools, from Character of Subject. —
(1.) The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such as the Na-
tivity, Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be sin-
cere), implies that the painter has a natural disposition to
dwell on the highest thoughts of which humanity is capa-
ble ; it constitutes him so far forth a painter of the highest
order, as, for instance, Leonardo, in his painting of the
Last Supper.
(2.) He who delights in representing the acts or medita-
tions of great men, as, for instance, Raphael painting the
School of Athens, is so far forth a painter of the second
order.
(3.) He who represents the passions and events of ordi-
nary life, is of the third order.
(4.) In this ordinary life, he who represents deep thoughts
and sorrows, as, for instance, Hunt, in his Claudia and Isa-
bella, and such other works, is of the highest rank in his
sphere.
(5.) He who represents the slight malignities and pas-
sions of the drawing room, as, for instance, Leslie, is of
still another rank.
(6.) He who represents the sports of boys, or the sim-
plicities of clowns, as Webster or Teniers, is still of another
rank.
(7.) He who represents vices and brutalities, of no hon-
orable rank.
COERUPTION OF ART SCHOOLS.
19
VII. Corruption of Art Schools. — Yet the corrup-
tion of the schools of high art, so far as this particular
quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth to
beauty. Great art dwells on all that is beautiful ; false art
omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts nature
as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is
most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of
direction, by removing or altering whatever it thinks ob-
jectionable. The evil results of which are manifold : —
Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts
ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of
all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white can-
vas cannot produce an effect of sunshine; the painter
must darken it in some places before he can make it look
luminous in others ; nor can an uninterrupted succession
of beauty produce the true effect of beauty ; it must be
foiled by inferiority before its own power can be devel-
oped. Nature has, for the most part, mingled her inferior
and nobler elements as she mingles sunshine with shade,
giving due use and influence to both, and the painter who
chooses to remove the shadow perishes in the burning
desert he has created. The truly high and beautiful art
of Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened
by his frank portraiture of the most ordinary features of
his brother monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of un-
gainly sanctity; but the modern German and Paphael-
esque schools lose all honor and nobleness in barber-like
admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real
faith except in straight noses and curled hair. Paul Ver-
onese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to
the queen; Shakespeare places Caliban beside Miranda, and
Autolycus beside Perdita; but the vulgar idealist with-
draws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his inno-
cence to the safety of the cloister; he pretends that he
does this in delicacy of choice and purity of sentiment,
20
THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS.
while, in truth, he has neither courage to front the mon-
ster nor wit to furnish the knave. Dwelling upon one
class of ideas, his art becomes at once monstrous and mor-
bid. High and un corrupted art consists neither in alter-
ing nor improving nature. 3 M. P., 34.
VIII. The Great Masters. — I will now name the masters
whom I think it would be well if we could agree, in our
Schools of Art in England, to consider our leaders. The
first and chief I will not myself presume to name ;
he shall be distinguished for you by the authority of
those two great painters of whom we have just been
speaking — Reynolds and Velasquez. You may remem-
ber that in your Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition
the most impressive things were the works of those
two men — nothing told upon the eye so much ; no other
pictures retained it with such a persistent power. Kow,
I have the testimony, first of Reynolds to Velasquez, and
then of Velasquez to the man whom I want you to take
as the master of all your English schools. The testimony
of Reynolds to Velasquez is very striking. I take it from
some fragments which have just been published by Mr.
William Cotton — precious fragments — of Reynolds'
diaries, which I chanced upon luckily as I was coming-
down here : for I was going to take Velasquez' testimony
alone, and then fell upon this testimony of Reynolds to
Velasquez, written most fortunately in Reynolds' own
hand — you may see the' manuscript. " What we are all,"
said Reynolds, " attempting to do with great labor, Velas-
quez does at once? Just think what is implied when a
man of the enormous power and facility that Reynolds
had, says he was "trying to do with great labor" what
Velasquez " did at once."
Having thus Reynolds' testimony to Velasquez, I will
take Velasquez' testimony to somebody else. You know
THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. 21
that Yelasquez was sent by Philip of Spain to Italy, to
buy pictures for him. He went all over Italy, saw the
living artists there, and all their best pictures when freshly
painted, so that he had every opportunity of judging; and
never was a man so capable of judging. He went to Rome
and ordered various works of living artists; and while
there, he was one day asked by Salvator Rosa what he
thought of Raphael. His reply, and the ensuing conversa-
tion, are thus reported by Boschini, in curious Italian
verse, which, thus translated by Dr. Donaldson, is quoted
in Mr. Stirling's Life of Velasquez : —
" The master" [Yelasquez] "stiffly bowed his figure tall
And said, ' For Rafael, to speak the truth —
I always was plain-spoken from my youth —
I cannot say I like his works at all.'
u ' Well/ said the other " [Salvator], " ' if you can run down
So great a man, I really cannot see
What you can find to like in Italy ;
To him we all agree to give the crown.'
" Diego answered thus : ' I saw in Venice
The true test of the good and beautiful ;
First in my judgment, ever stands that school,
And Titian first of all Italian men is.' "
" Tizian ze quel die porta la handier a."
Learn that line by heart, and act, at all events for some
time to come, upon Yelasquez' opinion in the matter.
Titian is much the safest master for you. Raphael's pow-
er, such as it was, and great as it was, depended wholly
upon transcendental characters in his mind ; it is " Ra-
phaelesque," properly so called ; but Titian's power is
simply the power of doing right. Whatever came before
Titian, he did wholly as it ought to be done. Do not
suppose that now in recommending Titian to you so strong-
ly, and speaking of nobody else to-night, I am retreating
22 THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS.
in anywise from what some of you may perhaps recollect in
my works, the enthusiasm with which I have always spo-
ken of another Venetian painter. There are three Vene-
tians who are never separated "in my mind — Titian,
Veronese, and Tin tore t. They all have their own un-
equalled gifts, and Tintoret especially has imagination
and depth of soul which I think renders him indisputably
the greatest man / but, equally indisputably, Titian is the
greatest painter }' and therefore the greatest painter who
ever lived. You may be led wrong by Tintoret # in many
respects, wrong by Raphael in more ; all that you learn
from Titian will be right. Then, with Titian, take Leo-
nardo, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. I name those three
masters for this reason : Leonardo has powers of subtle
drawing which are peculiarly applicable in many ways to
the drawing of fine ornament, and are very useful for all
students. Rembrandt and Durer are the only men whose
actual work of hand you can have to look at ; you can
have Rembrandt's etchings, or Durer's engravings actual-
ly hung in your schools ; and it is a main point for the
student to see the real thing, and avoid judging of masters
at second-hand. As, however, in obeying this principle,
you cannot often have opportunities of studying Venetian
painting, it is desirable that you should have a useful
standard of colour, and I think it possible for you to ob-
tain this. I cannot, indeed, without entering upon ground
which might involve the hurting the feelings of living ar-
tists, state exactly what I believe to be the relative posi-
tion of various painters in England at present with respect
to power of colour. But I may say this, that in the pecu-
liar gifts of colour which will be useful to you as students,
there are only one or two of the pre-Raphaelites, and Wil-
liam Hunt, of the old Water Colour Society, who would
* See Appendix I. — " Eight and Wrong."
THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. 23
be safe guides for you ; and as quite a safe guide, there is
nobody but William Hunt, because the pre-Raphaelites are
all more or less affected by enthusiasm and by various
morbid conditions of intellect and temper ; but old Wil-
liam Hunt — I am sorry to say " old," but I say it in a
loving way, for every year that has added to his life has
added also to his skill — William Hunt is as right as the
Venetians, as far as he goes, and what is more, nearly as
inimitable as they. And I think if we manage to put in
the principal schools of England a little bit of Hunt's
work, and make that somewhat of a standard of colour,
that we can apply his principles of colouring to subjects of
all kinds. Until you have had a work of his long near
you ; nay, unless you have been labouring at it, and try-
ing to copy it, you do not know the thoroughly grand
qualities that are concentrated in it. Simplicity, and in-
tensity, both of the highest character ; — simplicity of aim,
and intensity of power and success, are involved in that
man's unpretending labour.
Finally, you cannot believe that I would omit my own fa-
vourite, Turner. 1 fear from the very number of his works
left to the nation, that there is a disposition now rising to
look upon his vast bequest with some contempt. I beg of
you, if in nothing else, to believe me in this, that you can-
not further the art of England in any way more distinctly
than by giving attention to every fragment that has been
left by that man. The time will come when his full pow-
er and right place will be acknowledged ; that time will
not be for many a day yet : nevertheless, be assured — as
far as you are inclined to give the least faith to anything
I may say to you, be assured — that you can act for the
good of art in England in no better way than by using
whatever influence any of you have in any direction to
urge the reverent study and yet more reverent preservation
of the works of Turner. I do not say " the exhibition "
24 THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS.
of his works, for we are not altogether ripe for it : they
are still too far above us ; uniting, as I was telling you,
too many qualities for us to yet feel fully their range and
their influence ; — but let us only try to keep them safe
from harm, and show thoroughly and conveniently what
we show of them at all, and day by day their greatness
will dawn upon us more and more, and be the root of a
school of art in England, which I do not doubt may be as
bright, as just, and as refined as even that of Venice her-
self. The dominion of the sea seems to have been associ-
ated, in past time, with dominion in the arts also : Athens
had them together ; Venice had them together ; but by
so much as our authority over the ocean is wider than
theirs over the ^Egean or Adriatic, let us strive to make
our art more widely beneficent than theirs, though it can-
not be more exalted ; so working out the fulfilment, in
their wakening as well as their warning sense, of those
great words of the aged Tintoret :
"Sempre si fa il Mare Maggiore."
Two Paths, Lecfc. 11.
CHAPTEE III.
ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT.
I. Art Language. — Painting, or an generally, as snch,
with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends,
is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable
as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing. He who
has learned what is commonly considered the whole art
of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural
object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by
which his thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just
as much towards being that which we ought to respect as
a great painter, as a man who has learned how to express
himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being
a great poet. The language is, indeed, more difficult of
acquirement in the one case than in the other, and possesses
more power of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the
intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than lan-
guage, and all those excellences which are peculiar to the
painter as such, are merely what rhythm, melody, precision
and force are in the words of the orator and poet, neces-
sary to their greatness, but not the tests of their greatness.
It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by
what is represented and said, that the respective great-
ness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally deter-
mined.
Speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should call
a man a great painter only as he excelled in precision and
force in the language of lines, and a great versifier, as he
excelled in precision or force in the language of words.
A great poet would then be a term strictly, and in pre-
26
ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT.
cisely the same sense applicable to both, if warranted by
the character of the images or thoughts which each in
their respective languages conveyed.
II. Art Thoughts. — Take, for instance, one of the most
perfect poems or pictures (I use the words as synonymous)
which modern times have seen: — the "Old Shepherd's
Chief -mourner." Here the exquisite execution of the
glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touching
of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the
wood of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are lan-
guage— language clear and expressive in the highest degree.
But the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood,
the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged
the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the
head laid close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed
and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the
rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no
motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last
blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom
of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where
the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been
the life — how un watched the departure of him who is now
laid solitary in his sleep ; — these are all thoughts — thoughts
by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds
of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it
ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author, not as
the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a
drapery, but as the Man of Mind.
It is not, however, always easy, either in painting or
literature, to determine where the influence of language
stops, and where that of thought begins. Many thoughts
are so dependent upon the language in which they are
clothed, that they would lose half their beauty if other-
wise expressed. But the highest thoughts are those which
ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT.
27
are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any
composition and praise to which it is entitled, are in exact
proportion to its independency of language or expres-
sion. A composition is indeed usually most perfect, when
to such intrinsic dignity is added all .that expression can
do to attract and adorn ; but in every case of supreme
excellence this all becomes as nothing. We are more
gratified by the simplest lines or words which can sug-
gest the idea in its own naked beauty, than by the robe
or the gem which conceal while they decorate ; we are
better pleased to feel by their absence how little they
could bestow, than by their presence how much they can
destroy.
There is therefore a distinction to be made between
what is ornamental in language and what is expressive.
That part of it which is necessary to the embodying and
conveying the thought is worthy of respect and attention
as necessary to excellence, though not the test of it. But
that part of it which is decorative has little more to do
with the intrinsic excellence of the picture than the
frame or the varnishing of it. And this caution in dis-
tinguishing hetween the ornamental and the expressive is
peculiarly necessary in painting ; for in the language of
words it is nearly impossible for that which is not expres-
sive to be beautiful, except by mere rhythm or melody,
any sacrifice to which is immediately stigmatized as error.
But the beauty of mere language in painting is not only
very attractive and entertaining to the spectator, but re-
quires for its attainment no small exertion of mind and
devotion of time by the artist. Hence, in art, men have
frecpiently fancied that they were becoming rhetoricians
and poets when they were only learning to speak melo-
diously, and the judge has over and over again advanced
to the honor of authors those who were never more than
ornamental writing masters.
28
ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT.
Most pictures of the Dutch school, for instance, except-
ing always those of Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt,
are ostentatious exhibitions of the artist's power of speech,
the clear and vigorous elocution of useless and senseless
words : while the early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are
the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the stam-
mering lips of infants. It is not by ranking the former
as more than mechanics, or the latter as less than artists,
that the taste of the multitude, always awake to the lowest
pleasures which art can bestow, and blunt to the highest,
is to be formed or elevated. It must be the part of the
judicious critic carefully to distinguish what is language,
and what is thought, and to rank and praise pictures
chiefly for the latter, considering the former as a totally
inferior excellence, and one which cannot be compared
with nor weighed against thought in any way nor in any
degree whatsoever. The picture which has the nobler and
more numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, is
a greater and a better picture than that which has the less
noble and less numerous ideas, however beautifully ex-
pressed. ~No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution
can outweigh, one grain or fragment of thought. Three
penstrokes of Raffaelle are a greater and a better picture
than the most finished work that ever Carlo Dolci polished
into inanity. A finished work of a great artist is only
better than its sketch, if the sources of pleasure belonging
to colour and realization — valuable in themselves, — are so
employed as to increase the impressiveness of the thought.
But if one atom of thought has vanished, all color, all
finish, all execution, all ornament, are too dearly bought.
Nothing but thought can pay for thought, and the instant
that the increasing refinement or finish of the picture be
gins to be paid for by the loss of the faintest shadow of
an idea, that instant all refinement or finish is an ex-
crescence and a deformity. 1 M. P., 10-11.
ART LAWS.
29
III. Art Laws. — There are laws of truth and right in
painting, just as lixed as those of harmony in music, or of
affinity in chemistry. Those laws are perfectly ascertain-
able by labour, and ascertainable no otherwise. It is as
ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting
who has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it
would be for a person who had never studied chemistry to
lecture on affinities of elements. Pref. 3 M. P.
While in painting, much knowledge of what is technical
and practical is necessary to a right judgment, and while
every great composition is in perfect harmony with all
true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for eye,
ear, or thought to trace; while it is possible to reason,
with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles,
when the thing is once done, yet all our reasoning will
not enable any one to do another, thing like it, because all
reasoning falls infinitely short of a divine instinct. Thus
we may reason wisely over the way a bee builds its comb,
and be profited by finding out certain things about the
angles of it. But the bee knows nothing about the mat-
ter. It builds its comb in a far more inevitable way.
And, from a bee to Paul Veronese, all master-workers
work with this awful, this inspired unconsciousness.
3 M. P., 89.
CHAPTER IV.
LINES.
§ 1. Abstract beauty of form is supposed to depend on
continually varied curvatures of line and surface, associ-
ated so as to produce an effect of some
unity among themselves, and opposed,
in order to give them value, by more or
less straight or rugged lines.
The reader will, perhaps, here ask
why, if both the straight and curved
lines are necessary, one should be con-
sidered more beautiful than the other.
Exactly as we consider light beautiful
and darkness ugly, in the abstract,
though both are essential to all beauty;
Darkness mingled with colour gives the
delight of its depth or power; even
pure blackness, in spots or chequered
patterns, is often exquisitely delightful ;
and yet we do not therefore consider, m
the abstract, blackness to be beautiful.
Just in the same way straightness
mingled with curvature, that is to say,
the close approximation of part of any
curve to a straight line, gives to such
curve all its spring, power, and noble-
ness: and even perfect straightness,
limiting curves, or opposing them, is
Fig. i.' often pleasurable : yet, in the abstract,
straightness is always ugly, and curvature.always beautiful.
LINES.
31
Tims, in the opposite figure (Fig. 1), the eye will
instantly prefer the semicircle to the straight line ; the tre-
foil (composed of three semicircles) to the triangle ; and
the cinqfoil to the pentagon. The mathematician
may perhaps feel an opposite preference ; but he
must be conscious that he does so under the influence
of feelings quite different from those with which he
would admire (if he ever does admire) a picture or sta-
tue ; and that if he could free himself from those associa-
tions, his judgment of the relative agreeableness of the
forms would be altered. He may rest assured that, by the
natural instinct of the eye and thought, the preference is
given instantly, and always, to the curved form; and that
no human being of unprejudiced perceptions would desire
to substitute triangles for the ordinary shapes of clover
leaves, or pentagons for those of potentillas.
§ 2. All curvature, however, is not equally agreeable ;
but the examination of laws which render one curve more
beautiful than another, would, if carried out to any com-
pleteness, alone require a volume. The following few
examples will be enough to put the reader in the way of
pursuing the subject for himself.
Take any number of lines, a b, b c, c d, &c, Fig. 2,
32
LINES.
bearing any fixed proportion to each other. In this figure,
b c is one-third longer than a b, and c d than b c, and so
on. Arrange them in succession, keeping the inclination,
or angle, which each makes with the preceding one always
the same. Then a curve drawn through the extremities
of the lines will be a beautiful curve ; for it is governed
by consistent laws ; every part of it is connected by those
laws with every other, yet every part is different from
every other ; and the mode of its construction implies the
possibility of its continuance to infinity ; it would never
return upon itself though prolonged for ever. These
characters must be possessed by every perfectly beautiful
curve.
Fig. 3.
If we make the difference between the component or
measuring lines less, as in Fig. 3, in which each line is
longer than the preceding one only by a fifth, the curve
LINES.
33
will be more contracted and less beautiful. If we enlarge
the difference, as in Fig. 4, in which each line is double
the preceding one, the curve will suggest a more rapid
proceeding into infinite space, and will be more beautiful.
Of two curves, the same in other respects, that which sug-
gests the quickest attainment of infinity is always the
most beautiful.
Fig. 4.
§ 3. These three curves being all governed by the same
general law, with a difference only in dimensions of lines,
together with all the other curves so constructible, varied
as they may be infinitely, either by changing the lengths of
line, or the inclination of the lines to each other, are con-
sidered by mathematicians only as one curve, having this
peculiar character about it, different from that of most
other infinite lines, that any portion of it is a magnified
repetition of the preceding portion ; that is to say, the
portion between e and g is precisely what that between e
and e would look, if seen through a lens which magnified
somewhat more than twice. There is therefore a peculiar
equanimity and harmony about the look of lines of this
2*
LINES.
kind, differing, I think, from the expression of any others
except the circle. Beyond the point a the curve may be
imagined to continue to an infinite degree of smallness,
always circling nearer and nearer to a point, which, how-
ever, it can never reach.
§ 4. Again : if, along the horizontal line, A b, Fig. 5
opposite, we measure any number of equal distances, a h,
b c, &c, and raise perpendiculars from the points b, c, d,
&c, of which each perpendicular shall be longer, by some
given proportion (in this figure it is one third), than the
preceding one, the curve x y, traced through their extremi-
ties, will continually change its direction, but will advance
into space in the direction of y as long as we continue to
measure distances along the line a b, always inclining
more and more to the nature of a straight line, yet never
becoming one, even if continued to infinity. It would, in
like manner, continue to infinity in the direction of x,
always approaching the line a b, yet never touching it.
§ 5. Am infinite number of different lines, more or less
violent in curvature according to the measurements we
adopt in designing them, are included, or defined, by each
of the laws just explained. But the number of these laws
themselves is also infinite. There is no limit to the multi-
tude of conditions which may be invented, each producing
a group of curves of a certain common nature. Some of
these laws, indeed, produce single curves, which, like the
circle, can vary only in size; but, for the most part, they
vary also, like lines we have just traced, in the rapidity of
their curvature. Among these innumerable lines, however,
there is one source of difference in character which divides
them, infinite as they are in number, into two great classes.
The first class consists of those which are limited in their
course, either ending abruptly, or returning to some point
from which they set out ; the second class, of those lines
whose nature is to proceed for ever into space. Any por-
LINES.
35
tion of a circle, for instance, is, by the law of its bein
compelled, if it continue its
course, to return to the point V
from which it set out ; so also
any portion of the oval curve
(called an ellipse), produced by
cutting a cylinder obliquely
across. And if a single point
be marked on the rim of a car-
riage wheel, this point, as the
wheel rolls along the road, will
trace a curve in the air from
one part of the road to another,
which is called a cycloid, and
to which the law of its existence
appoints that it shall always
follow a similar course, and be
terminated by the level line on
which the wheel rolls. All
such curves are of inferior
beauty : and the curves winch
are incapable of being com-
pletely drawn, because, as in
the two cases above given, the
law of their being supposes
them to proceed for ever into
space, are of a higher beauty.
§ 6. Thus, in the very first
elements of form, a lesson is
given us as to the true source
of the nobleness and choosea-
bleness of all things. The two
classes of curves thus sternly
separated from each other, may
most properly be distinguished
Fig. 5.
as the "Mortal and Im-
36
LINES.
mortal Curves ; " the one having an appointed term of
existence, the other absolutely incomprehensible and
endless, only to be seen or grasped during a certain
moment of their course. And it is found univer-
sally that the class to which the human mind is at-
tached for its chief enjoyment are the Endless or Immor-
tal lines.
§ 7. " Nay," but the reader answers, " what right have
you to say that one class is more beautiful than the other %
Suppose I like the finite curves best, who shall say which
of us is right % "
No one. It is simply a question of experience. You
will not, I think, continue to like the finite curves best as
you contemplate them carefully, and compare them with
the others. And if you should do so, it then yet becomes
a question to be decided by longer trial, or more widely
canvassed opinion. And when we find on examination
that every form which, by the consent of human kind, has
been received as lovely, in vases, flowing ornaments, em-
broideries, and all other things dependent on abstract line,
is composed of these infinite curves, and that Nature uses
them for every important contour, small or large, which
she desires to recommend to human observance, we shall
not, I think, doubt that preference of such lines is a sign
of healthy taste, and true instinct.
§ 8. I am not sure, however, how far the delightf illness
of such line, is owing, not merely to their expression of
infinity, but also to that of restraint or moderation. Com-
pare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 9, where the sub-
ject is entered into at some length. Certainly the beauty
of such curvature is owing, in a considerable degree, to
both expressions ; but when the line is sharply terminated,
perhaps more to that of moderation than of infinity. For
the most part, gentle or subdued sounds, and gentle or
subdued colours, are more pleasing than either in their ut-
LINES.
37
most force ; nevertheless, in all the noblest compositions,
this utmost power is permitted, but only for a short time,
or over a small space. Music must rise to its utmost loud-
ness, and fall from it ; colour must be gradated to its ex-
treme brightness, and descend from it ; and I believe that
absolutely perfect treatment would, in either case, permit
the intensest sound and purest colour only for a point or
for a moment.
Curvature is regulated by precisely the same laws. For
the most part, delicate or slight curvature is more agree-
able than violent or rapid curvature ; nevertheless, in the
best compositions, violent curvature is permitted, but per-
mitted only over small spaces in the curve.
§ 9. The right line is to the curve what monotony is
to melody, and what unvaried colour is to gradated colour.
And as often the sweetest music is so low and continuous
as to approach a monotone; and as often the sweetest
gradations so delicate and subdued as to approach to "flat-
ness, so the finest curves are apt to hover about the right
line, nearly coinciding with it for a long space of their
curve ; never absolutely losing their own curvilinear
character, but apparently every moment on the point of
merging into the right line. When this is the case, the
line generally returns into vigorous curvature at some
part of its course, otherwise it is apt to be weak, or
slightly rigid ; multitudes of other curves, not ap-
proaching the right line so nearly, remain less vigor-
ously bent in the rest of their course ; so that the quan-
tity "x" of curvature is the same in both, though differently
distributed.
* Quantity of curvature is as measurable as quantity of any thing-
else ; only observe that it depends on the nature of the line, not on its
magnitude ; thus, in simple circular curvature, a b, Fig, 7, being the
fourth of a large circle, and b c the half of a smaller one, the quantity
of the element of circular curvature in the entire line a c is three-fourths
of that in any circle, — the same as the quantity in the line ef.
38
LINES.
§ 10. The modes in which Nature produces variable
curves on a large scale are very numerous, but may gene-
rally be resolved into the gra-
dual increase or diminution of
some given force. Thus, if a
chain hangs between two
points a and b, Fig. 6, the
weight of chain sustained by
any given link increases gradu-
ally from the central link at c,
which has only its own weight
to sustain, to the link at b,
which sustains, besides its own,
the weight of all the links be-
tween it and c. This increased
weight is continually pulling
the curve of the swinging
chain more nearly straight as
it ascends towards b ; and
hence one of the most beauti-
fully gradated natural curves
Fig. 6. — called the catenary — of
course assumed not by chains only, but by all flexible and
elongated substances, suspended between two points. If
the points of suspension be near each other, we have such
as at d ; and if, as in nine cases out of ten will be the
case, one point of suspension is lower than the other, a
still more varied and beautiful curve is formed, as at e.
Such curves constitute nearly the whole beauty of gene-
ral contour in falling drapery, tendrils and festoons of
weeds over rocks, and such other pendent objects.*
* The catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if its di-
rection does not alter with its length ; but it is capable of infinity,
implying such alteration by the infinite removal of the points of suspen-
sion. It entirely corresponds in its effect on the eye and mind to the
LINES.
39
§ 11. Again. If any object be cast into the air, the
force with which it is cast dies gradually away, and its
own weight brings it downwards ; at first slowly, then
faster and faster every moment, in a curve which, as the
line of fall necessarily nears the perpendicular, is continu-
ally approximating to a straight line. This curve — called
the parabola — is that of all projected or bounding objects.
Tig. 7.
§ 12. Again. If a rod or stick of any kind gradually
becomes more slender or more flexible, and is bent by any
external force, the force will not only increase in effect as
the rod becomes weaker, but the rod itself, once bent, will
continually yield more willingly, and be more easily bent
farther in the same direction, and will thus show a con-
tinual increase of curvature from its thickest or most
rigid part to its extremity. This kind of line is that as-
sumed by boughs of trees under wind.
§ 13. Again. Whenever any vital force is impressed on
any organic substance, so as to die gradually away as the
substance extends, an infinite curve is commonly produced
infinite curves. I do not know the exact nature of the apparent curves
of suspension formed by a high and weighty waterfall ; they are de-
pendent on the gain in rapidity of descent by the central current, where
its greater body is less arrested by the air ; and I apprehend, are cate-
nary in character, though not in cause.
40
LINES.
by its outline. Thus, in the budding of the leaf, already
examined, the gradual dying away of the exhilaration of
the younger ribs produces an infinite curve in the outline
of the leaf, which sometimes fades imperceptibly into a
right line, — sometimes is terminated sharply, by meeting
the opposite curve at the point of the leaf.
§ 14. Nature, however, rarely condescends to use one
curve only in any of her finer forms. She almost always
unites two infinite ones, so as to form a reversed curve
for each main line, and then modulates each of them into
myriads of minor ones. In a single elm leaf, such as Fig.
4, Plate 8, she uses three such — one for the stalk, and one
for each of the sides, — to regulate their general flow ; di-
viding afterwards each of their broad lateral lines into
some twenty less curves by the jags of the leaf, and then
again into minor waves. Thus, in any complicated group
of leaves whatever, the infinite curves are themselves al-
most countless. In a single extremity of a magnolia
spray, the uppermost figure in Plate 2, including only
sixteen leaves, each leaf having some three to five distinct
curves along its edge, the lines for separate study, includ-
ing those of the stems, would be between sixty and eighty.
In a single spring-shoot of laburnum, the lower figure in
the same plate, I leave the reader to count them for him-
self; all these, observe, being seen at one view only, and
every change of position bringing into sight another equal-
ly numerous set of curves. For instance, in Plate 3, is a
group of four withered leaves, in four positions, giving,
each, a beautiful and well composed group of curves,
variable gradually into the next group as the branch is
turned.
§ 15. The following Plate (4), representing a young
shoot of independent ivy, just beginning to think it would
like to get something to cling to, shows the way in which
Nature brings subtle curvature into forms that at first
LINES.
41
seem rigid. The stems of the young leaves look nearly
straight, and the sides of the projecting points, or bastions,
of the leaves themselves nearly so ; but on examination it
Avill be found that there is not a stem nor a leaf-edge but
is a portion of one inlinite curve, if not of two or three.
The main line of the supporting stem is a very lovely one ;
and the little half -opened leaves, in their thirteenth-century
segmental simplicity (compare Fig. 9, Plate 8 in Yol. III.),
singularly spirited and beautiful. It may, perhaps, in-
terest the general reader to know that one of the infinite
curves derives its name from its supposed resemblance to
the climbing of ivy up a tree.
§ 16. I spoke just now of " well-composed. " curves, — I
mean curves so arranged as to oppose and set each other
off, and yet united by a common law ; for as the beauty
of every curve depends on the unity of its several compo-
nent lines, so the beauty of each group of curves depends
on their submission to some general law. In forms which
quickly attract the eye, the law which unites the curves is
distinctly manifest ; but, in the richer compositions of
ISature, cunningly concealed by delicate infractions of it ; —
wilfulnesses they seem, and forgetfuln esses, which, if once
the law be perceived, only increase our delight in it by
showing that it is one of equity not of rigor, and allows,
within certain limits, a kind of individual liberty. Thus the
system of unison which regulates the magnolia shoot, in
Plate 42, is formally expressed in Fig. 8. Every line has
it^ origin in the point p, and the curves generally diminish
in intensity towards the extremities of the leaves, one or
two, however, again increasing their sweep near the points.
In vulgar ornamentation, entirely rigid laws of line are
always observed; and the common Greek honeysuckle
and other such formalisms are attractive to uneducated
eyes, owing to their manifest compliance with the first
conditions of unity and symmetry, being to really noble
42
LrNES.
ornamentation what the sing-song of a bad reader of
poetry, laying regular emphasis on every required syllable
of every foot, is to the varied, irregular, unexpected, inim-
itable cadence of the voice of a person of sense and feeling
reciting the same lines, — not in cognisant of the rhythm,
but delicately bending it to the expression of passion, and
the natural sequence of the thought.
P
Fig. 8.
§ 17. In mechanically drawn patterns of dress, Alham-
bra and common Moorish ornament, Greek mouldings,
common flamboyant traceries, common Corinthian and
Ionic capitals, and such other work, lines of this declared
kind (generally to be classed under the head of " doggrel
LINES.
43
ornamentation'') may be seen in rich prof usion ; and they
are necessarily the only kind of lines
which can be felt or enjoyed by per-
sons who have been educated without
reference to natural forms ; their in-
stincts being blunt, and their eyes
actually incapable of perceiving
the inflexion of noble curves. But
the moment the perceptions have
been refined by reference to natural
form, the eye requires perpetual vari-
ation and transgression of the formal
law. Take the simplest possible con-
dition of thirteenth-century scroll-
work, Fig. 9. The law or cadence
established is of a circling tendril,
terminating in an ivy-leaf. In vul-
gar design, the curves of the circling tendril would have
been similar to each other, and might have been drawn by
a machine, or by some mathematical formula. But in
good design all imitation by machinery is impossible. No
curve is like another for an instant ; no branch springs at
an expected point. A cadence is observed, as in the re-
turning clauses of a beautiful air in music ; but every
clause has its own change, its own surprises. The enclos-
ing form is here stiff and (nearly) straight-sided, in order
to oppose the circular scroll-work ; but on looking close it
will be found that each of its sides is a portion of an infinite
curve, almost too delicate to be traced ; except the short
lowest one, which is made quite straight, to oppose the
rest.
I give one more example from another leaf of the same
manuscript, Fig. 10, merely to show the variety introduced
by the old designers between page and page. And, in
general, the reader may take it for a settled law that,
44
LINES.
whatever can be done by machinery, or imitated by for-
mula, is not worth doing or imitating at all.
Pig. 10.
§ 18. The quantity of admissible transgression of law
varies with the degree in which the ornamentation involves
or admits imitation of nature. Thus, if these ivy leaves
in Fig. 10 were completely drawn in light and shade, they
LINES.
45
would not be properly connected with the more or less
regular sequences of the scroll ; and in very subordinate
ornament, something like complete symmetry may be
admitted, as in bead mouldings, chequerings, &c. Also,
the ways in which the transgression may be granted vary
infinitely ; in the finest compositions it is perpetual, and
yet so balanced and atoned for as always to bring about
more beauty than if there had been no transgression. In
a truly fine mountain or organic line, if it is looked at in
detail, do one would believe in its being a continuous
curve, or being subjected to any fixed law. It seems
broken, and bending a thousand ways ; perfectly free and
wild, and yielding to every impulse. But, after following
with the eye three or four of its impulses, we shall begin
to trace some strange order among them ; every added
movement will make the ruling intent clearer ; and when
the wdiole life of the line is revealed at last, it will be
found to have been, throughout, as obedient to the true
law of its course as the stars in their orbits.
Thus much may suffice for our immediate purpose re-
specting beautiful lines in general. 4 M. P., 257.
CHAPTER V.
COMPOSITION".
Composition means, literally and simply, putting several
things together, so as to make one thing out of them ; the
nature and goodness of which they all have a share in pro-
ducing. Thus a musician composes an air, by putting
notes together in certain relations ; a poet composes a
poem, by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order ;
and a painter a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and
colours in pleasant order.
In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the
result of composition. A paviour cannot be said to com-
pose the heap of stones which he empties from his cart,
nor the sower the handful of seed which he scatters from
his hand. It is the essence of composition that everything
should be in a determined place, perform an intended
part, and act, in that part, advantageously for everything
that is connected with it.
Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type,
in the arts of mankind, of the Providential government of
the world.* It is an exhibition, in the order given to
notes, or colours, or forms, of the advantage of perfect
fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a well-com-
posed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared,
but the least is as necessary as the greatest : no note, how-
ever prolonged, is tedious ; but the others prepare for, and
are benefited by, its duration : no note, however high, is
* See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. viii.
§ 6 ; Office of Imagination in Composition, Modern Painters, vol. ii. 146.
COMPOSITION.
47
tyrannous ; the others prepare for, and are benefited by,
its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered; the
others prepare for, and sympathize with, its humility : and
the result is, that each and every note has a value in the
position assigned to it, which, by itself, it never possessed,
and of which, by separation 'from the others, it would in-
stantly be deprived.
Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought en-
hances the value of those which precede and follow it ;
and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so
much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at
the same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly re-
cognize it.
Much more in a great picture ; every line and colour is
so arranged as to advantage the rest. IS^one are inessential,
hxywever slight ; and none are independent, however for-
cible. It is not enough that they truly represent natural
objects ; but they must fit into certain places, and gather
into certain harmonious groups : so that, for instance, the
red chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a
chimney, but that it may affect, in a certain way pleasur-
able to the eye, the pieces of green or blue in other parts
of the picture ; and we ought to see that the work is mas-
terly, merely by the positions and cpiantities of these patch-
es of green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders
it perfectly impossible to determine what the colours re-
present: or to see whether the red is a chimney, or an old
woman's cloak; and whether the blue is smoke, sky, or
water.
It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all
wc do, of the great laws of Divine government and human
polity, that composition in the arts should strongly affect
every order of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless.
Hence the popular delight in rhythm and metre, and in
simple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that
48
COMPOSITION.
power of composition in the fine arts should be an exclu-
sive attribute of great intellect. All men can more or less
copy what they see, and, more or less, remember it : powers
of reflection and investigation are also common to us all,
so that the decision of inferiority in these rests only on
questions of degree. A. has a better memory than B., and
C. reflects more profoundly than D. But the gift of com-
position is not given at all to more than one man in a
thousand ; in its highest range, it does not occur above
three or four times in a century.
It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossi-
ble to give rules which will enable you to compose. You
might much more easily receive rules to enable you to be
witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would
cease to be either admirable or amusing : if it were possible
to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not
have been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by
rule, Titian and Veronese would be ordinary men. The
essence of composition lies precisely in the fact of its
being unteachable, in its being the operation of an indi-
vidual mind of range and power exalted above others.
But though no one can invent by rule, there are some
simple laws of arrangement which it is well for you to
know, because, though they will not enable you to produce
a good picture, they will often assist you to set forth what
goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than
you could have done otherwise ; and by tracing them in
the work of good composers, you may better understand
the grasp of their imagination, and the power it possesses
over their materials. I shall briefly state the chief of
these laws.
COMPOSITION.
49
LAWS OF ARRANGEMENT.
1. The Law of Prmcipality.— The great object of
composition being always to secure unity ; that is, to make
out of many things one whole ; the first mode in which
this can be effected is, by determining that one feature
shall be more important than all the rest, and that the
others shall group with it in subordinate positions.
This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation.
Thus the group of two leaves, a, Fig. 11., is unsatisfactory,
because it has no leading leaf ;
but that at b is prettier,
because it has a head or mas-
ter-leaf ; and c more satisfac-
tory still, because the subor-
dination of the other members
to this head leaf is made more manifest by their gradual
loss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the
pleasure we have in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and
such others.
Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger or
brighter than the other lights, or one figure more promi-
nent than the other figures, or one mass of colour dominant
over all the other masses ; and in general you will find it
much benefit your sketch if you manage that there shall
be one li^lit on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the
sky, which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading
gloom, above all others. But the observance of the rule
is often so cunningly concealed by the great composers,
that its force is hardly at first traceable; and you will
generally find they are vulgar pictures in which the law is
striki/ngly manifest. This may be simply illustrated by
musical melody ; for instance, in such phrases as this:
50
COMPOSITION".
one note (here the upper o) rules the whole passage, and
has the full energy of it concentrated in itself. Such
passages, corresponding to completely subordinated com-
positions in painting, are apt to be wearisome if often
repeated. But in such a phrase as this :
*=2
-w— *
it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The
a in the last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very
equal current of power running through the whole ; and
such passages rarely weary. And this principle holds
through vast scales of arrangement; so that in the grandest
compositions, such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana,
or Raphael's Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the
principal figure ; and very commonly the figure which is
really chief does not catch the eye at first, but is gradually
felt to be more and more conspicuous as we gaze. Thus
in Titian's grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the
figure meant to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen,
whose portrait it was evidently the painter's object to
make as interesting as possible. But a grand Madonna,
and a St. George with a drifting banner, and many figures
more, occupy the centre of the picture, and first catch the
eye ; little by little we are led away from them to a gleam
of pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from the
head which it shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more.
As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are
more or less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier
way of explaining them to analyse one composition
thoroughly, than to give instances from various works. I
COMPOSITION.
51
sliall therefore take one of Turner's simplest ; which will
allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate
each law by it as we proceed.
Figure 12. is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the
whole subject; the old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz,
Fig. 12.
the town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein on the
left. The leading or master feature is, of course, the tower
on the bridge. It is kept from being too principal by an
important group on each side of it ; the boats, on the right,
and Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass,
and more forcible in colour, but they are broken into
small divisions, while the tower is simple, and therefore it
still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its mass, but so
reduced by aerial perspective of colour that it cannot con-
tend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and
becomes the key of the picture. We shall see presently
how the very objects which seem at first to contend with
it for the mastery are made, occultly, to increase its pre-
eminence.
52
COMPOSITION.
2. The Law of Repetition, — -Another important means
of expressing unity is to mark some kind of -sympathy
among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest,
because most surprising, kind* of sympathy, is when one
group imitates or repeats another / not in the way of
halance or symmetry, but subordinate!)7, like a far-away
and broken echo of it. Raphael makes one figure
repeat another in motion or attitude. Prout lias in-
sisted much on this law in all his writings on coriiposi-
tion ; and I think it is even more authoritatively present
in the minds of most great composers than the law
of principality. It is quite curious to see the pains
that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important
passage of colour; in the Pembroke Castle for instance,
there are two fishing-boats, one with a red, and another
with a white sail. In a line with them, on the beach,
are two fish in precisely the same relative positions ;
one red and one white. It is observable that he uses
the artifice chiefiy in pictures where he wishes to obtain
an expression of repose: in my -notice of the plate
of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbours of England,
I have already had occasion to dwell on this point ; and I
extract in the note * one or two sentences which explain
the principle. In the composition I have chosen for our
illustration, this reduplication is employed to a singular
extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first repeated by
the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this
* " In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are
peaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events ;
that one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition
of another history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimi-
larity and non- succession are results of interference and disquietude.
Thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard,
its repetition of the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable
in no other way ; hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by
the voice of a cuckoo."
COMPOSITION.
53
lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then
the spires of Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how
they are arranged in reality does not matter ; when we
are composing a great picture, we must play the towers
about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were
chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement
of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it
not for a little one which pretends to make a triad of the
last group on the right, but is so faint as hardly to be dis-
cernible : it just takes off the attention from the artifice,
helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat,
which, however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the
stern.* Then there is the large boat near, and its echo
beyond it. That echo is divided into two again, and
each of those two smaller boats has two figures in it ;
while two figures are also sitting together on the great
rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground.
Then, finally, the great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which
appears at first to have no answering form, has almost its
facsimile in the bank on which the girl is sitting; this
bank is as absolutely essential to the completion of the
picture as any object in the wdiole series. All this is
done to deepen the effect of repose.
Symmetry or the balance of parts or masses in nearly
equal opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment
under the law of Repetition. For the opposition, in a
symmetrical object, is of like things reflecting each other;
it is not the balance of contrary natures (like that of day
and night) but of like natures or like forms ; one side of
a leaf being set like the reflection of the other in water.
* This is obscure in the rude woodcut, the masts being so delicate
that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original
they have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind.
" Two lines must not mimic one another, one mass must not be equal
to another."— 2 M. P., 140.
54
COMPOSITION.
Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accu-
rate. She takes the greatest care to secure some differ-
ence between the corresponding things or parts of things ;
and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only per-
mitted in animals, because their motions secure perpetual
difference between the balancing parts. Stand before a
mirror ; hold your arms in precisely the same position at
each side, your head upright, your body straight ; divide
your hair exactly in the middle, and get it as nearly as
you can into exactly the same shape over each ear, and
you will see the effect of accurate symmetry ; you will see,
no less, how all grace and power in the human form result
from the interference of motion and life with symmetry,
and from the reconciliation of its balance with its change-
fulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest
type of symmetry as understood by modern architects.
In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the
balance of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest
sources of their power: almost any works of the early
painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto, &c., will furnish you
with notable instances of it. The Madonna of Perugino *
in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael on one
side and Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example
as you can have. 2 M. P., 72, sec. 4.
In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less
carried out, in proportion to the wish of the painter to ex-
press disciplined calmness. In bad compositions, as in
bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one side answering
a tree on the other ; but in good compositions, as in grace-
ful statues, it is always easy, and sometimes hardly trace-
able. In the Coblentz, however, you cannot have much
difficulty in seeing how the boats on one side of the tower
and the figures on the other are set in nearly equal balance ;
the tower, as a central mass uniting both. See 2 M. P., 71.
COMPOSITION.
55
3. The Law of Continuity. — Another important and
pleasurable way of expressing unity, is by giving some
orderly succession to a number of objects more or less
similar. And this succession is most interesting when
it is connected with some gradual change in the
aspect or character of the objects. Thus the succes-
sion of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting
when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more
obscure in distance ; so the succession of mountain prom-
ontories one behind another, on the flanks of a valley ; so
the succession of clouds, fading farther and farther to-
wards the horizon ; each promontory and each cloud being
of different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm
and appointed order. If there be no change at all in the
shape or size of the objects, there is no continuity; there
is only repetition — monotony. It is the change in shape
which suggests the idea of their being individually free,
and able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules
them, and yet submitting to it. I will leave our chosen
illustrative composition for a moment to take up another,
still more expressive of this law. It is one of Turner's
most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset ;
so delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is
no use for me to try to reach it with any kind of outline
in a woodcut; but the rough sketch, Fig. 13, is enough
to give an idea of its arrangement. The aim of the painter
has been to give the in tensest expression of repose, together
with the enchanted lulling, monotonous motion of cloud
and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable
ranks after the sun, meeting towards the point in the hori-
zon where he has set; and the tidal waves gain in wind-
ing currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in
which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges:
just folding one over another as they meet, like a little
piece of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two chil-
56
COMPOSITION.
dren kiss and clap their hands, and then going on again,
each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed arches on the
sand as their thin edges intersect in parting ; but all this
would not have been enough expressed without the line
of the old pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and
bent by the storm-waves, and now seeming to stoop in
following one another, like dark ghosts escaping slowly
from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.
Fig. 13.
I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustra-
tion of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for
our general illustration. It was simply that gradual suc-
cession of the retiring arches of the bridge which induced
Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same
principle wdiich led him always to seize on subjects in-
cluding Ions: bridges wherever he could find them ; but
especially, observe, unequal bridges, having the highest
arch at one side rather than at the centre. There is a
reason for this, irrespective of general laws of composi-
tion, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I
COMPOSITION.
57
may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you
rest from the study of composition.
All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they
like to lean a little on one side : they cannot bear to have
their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if
they can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and
another to get cool under; one shingly shore to play over,
where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike,
and another steep shore, under which they can pause, and
purify themselves, and get their strength of waves fully
together for due occasion. Rivers in this way are just like
wise men, who keep one side of their life for play, and
another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering,
and transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep
counsel on the other side when they set themselves to their
main purpose. And rivers are just in this divided, also,
like wicked and good men: the good rivers have service-
able deep places all along their banks, that ships can sail
in ; but the wicked rivers go scoopingly irregularly un-
der their banks until they get full of strangling eddies,
which no boat can row over without being twisted against
the rocks ; and pools like wells, which no one can get out
of but the water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; — but,
wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds
of sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-
mason therefore throws a bridge over a strong stream is,
of course, to build a great door to let the cat through, and
little doors to let the kittens through ; a great arch for the
great current, to give it room in flood time, and little
arches for the little currents along the shallow shore. This,
even without any prudential respect for the floods of the
great current, he would do in simple economy of work and
stone; for the smaller your arches are, the less material
you want on their flanks. Two arches over the same span
of river, supposing the butments are at the same depth, are
58
COMPOSITION".
cheaper than one, and that by a great deal ; so that, where
the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches
many and low; as the water gets deeper, and it becomes
troublesome to build his piers up from the bottom, he
throws his arches wider; at last he comes to the deep
stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that, he
throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with
another little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of
course as arches are wider they must be higher, or they
will not stand ; so the roadway must rise as the arches widen.
And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its
highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of
minor arches running over the flat shore on the other ;
usually a steep bank at the river-side next the large arch ;
always, of course, a flat shore on the side of the small ones;
and the bend of the river assuredly concave towards this
Hat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank ; or,
if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the
shore at the steep end of the bridge.
Now this kind of bridge, sympathising, as it does, with
the spirit of the river, and marking the nature of the
thing it has to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of a
bridge ; and all endeavours to clo the thing in a grand
engineer's manner, with a level roadway and equal arches,
are barbarous ; not only because all monotonous forms are
ugly in themselves, but because the mind perceives at once
that there has been cost uselessly thrown away for the
sake of formality.*
* The cost of art in getting a bridge level is always lost, for you must
get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you only can
make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and pre-
tending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted
money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the bridge
should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope,
whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge
can take it, and not pushed aside into the approach, as in our Waterloo
COMPOSITION.
59
"Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Tur-
nerian bridge in Fig. 12 is of the absolutely perfect type,
and is still farther interesting by having its main arcli
crowned by a watch-tower. But as I want you to note
especially what perhaps was not the case in the real bridge,
but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though
the arches diminish gradually, not one is regularly dimin-
ished— they are all of different shapes and sizes : you can-
not see this clearly in Fig. 12, but in the larger diagram,
Fig. 14, over leaf, you will with ease. This is indeed
also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral
currents near the shore are of course irregular in size,
and a simple builder would naturally vary his arches
accordingly ; and also, if the bottom was rocky, build his
piers where the rocks came. But it is not as a part of
bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition,
that this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once
raises the object thus treated from the lower or vulgar
unity of rigid law to the greater unity of clouds, and
waves, and trees, and human souls, each different, each
obedient, and each in harmonious service.
4. The Lavj of Curvature. — There is, however, another
point to be noticed in this bridge of Turner's. Kot only does
road ; the only rational excuse for doing which is that when the slope
must be long it is inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the bridge,
and that any restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge
than on the embankment. To this I answer : first, it is not more dan-
gerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by
an effective parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or
only a useless rail ; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on
the bridge, and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite
safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your
wide embankment at the side loses good ground ; and so my picturesque
bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built
again some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed things which
we fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical rigidities of the engi-
neering mind.
60
COMPOSITION.
it slope away unequally at its sides, but it slopes in a gradual
though very subtle curve. And if you substitute a straight
line for this curve (drawing one with a rule from the base
of the tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in Fig.
14., and effacing the curve), you will instantly see that the
design has suffered grievously. You may ascertain, by
experiment, that all beautiful objects whatsoever are thus
terminated by delicately curved lines, except where the
straight line is indispensable to their use or stability : and
that when a complete system of straight lines, throughout
the form, is necessary to that stability, as in crystals, the
beauty, if any exists, is in colour and transparency, not in
form. Cut out the shape of any crystal you like, in white
wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily, and you will
feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective
of added colour, or other interfering elements of beauty.
Well, as curves are more beautif ul than straight lines,
it is necessary to a good composition that its continuities
of object, mass, or colour should be, if possible, in curves,
rather than straight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one
of the simplest and prettiest examples of a graceful con-
tinuity of this kind is in the line traced at any moment
by the corks of a net as it is being drawn : nearly every
person is more or less attracted by the beauty of the dotted
line. Now it is almost always possible, not only to secure
such a continuity in the arrangement or boundaries of
objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of the
net, are actually connected with each other, but — and this
is a still more noble and interesting kind of continuity
— among features which appear at first entirely separate.
Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 12.,
appear at first independent of each other; but when I
give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. .15., the reader
may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and
harmony among them. The reason of this is, that they
62
COMPOSITION.
are all bounded by one grand curve, traced by the dotted
line ; out of the seven towers, four precisely touch this
curve, the others only falling back from it here and there
to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.
Fig. 15.
And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities
of this kind : it is, in drawing large forest or mountain
forms, essential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein
might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly
the basalt rock on which they stand did ; for all mountain
forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor covered by
straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by
these great curves, it being one of the aims of ISTature in
all her work to produce them. The reader must already
know this, if he has been able to sketch at all among the
mountains ; if not, let him merely draw for himself, care-
COMPOSITION.
63
fully, the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where
they are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on
them. The steeper shore of the Thames at Maidenhead,
or any of the downs at Brighton or Dover, or, even nearer,
about Croydon (as Addington Hills), are easily accessible
to a Londoner ; and he will soon find not only how con-
stant, but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful cur-
vature is distinguished from ungraceful by two characters ;
first, its moderation, that is to say, its close approach to
straightness in some part of its course ; * and, secondly, by
its variation, that is to say, its never remaining equal in
degree at different parts of its course.
Winkelnian's Ancient Art, p. 48.
This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.
A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole
line, from less to more curvature, or more to less, so that
no part of the line is a segment of a circle, or can be
drawn by compasses in any way whatever. Thus, in Fig.
16., a is a bad curve, because it is part of a circle, and is
therefore monotonous throughout ; but b is a good curve,
because it continually changes its direction as it proceeds.
* I cannot waste space here by reprinting- what I have said in other
books : but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of this
part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. xvii. ; and Stones
of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8.
64
COMPOSITION.
The first difference between good and bad drawing of
tree boughs consists in observance
CD
of this fact. Thus, when I put
leaves on the line b, as in Fig. 17.,
von can immediately feel the
springiness of character dependent
Fig-17- on the changeful ness of the curve.
You may put leaves on the other
line for yourself, but you will find you cannot make a
right tree-spray of it. For all tree boughs, large or small,
as wTell as all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this
character; and it is a point
of primal necessity that your
eye should always seize and
your hand trace it. Here are
two more portions of good
curves, with leaves put on
them at the extremities in-
stead of the flanks, Fig. 18. ;
and two showing the arrange-
ment of masses of foliage
seen a little farther off, Fig.
19., which you may in like
manner amuse yourself by turning into segments of cir-
cles— you will see with what result. I hope, however,
you have beside you, by this time, many good studies of
tree boughs carefully made, in which you may study
variations of curvature in their most complicated and
lovely forms.*
B. Isot only does every good curve vary in general
* If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without hav-
ing gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of the
ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. p. 33., and examine the curves of its
boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated nnder the
heads A and B.
COMPOSITION".
65
tendency, but it is modulated, as it
proceeds, by myriads of subordinate
curves. Thus the outlines of a tree
trunk are never as at a* Fig. 20., but
as at b. So also in waves, clouds,
and all other nobly formed masses.
Thus another essential difference
between good and bad drawing, or
good and bad sculpture, depends on the quantity and
refinement of minor curvatures car-
ried, by good work, into the great
lines. Strictly speaking, however,
this is not variation in large curves,
but composition of large curves
out of small ones ; it is an in-
crease in the quantity of the beau-
tiful element, but not a change in
its nature.
5. The Law of Radia tion. — AVe
have hitherto been concerned only
with the binding of our various
objects into beautiful lines or pro-
cessions. The next point we have
to consider is, how we may unite
these lines or processions them-
selves, so as to make groups of them.
Now, there are two kinds of har-
monies of lines. One in which,
moving more or less side by side,
they variously, but evidently with
consent, retire from or approacl l each
other, intersect or oppose eacli othei
in music, for different voices, thus approach and cross,
fall and rise, in harmony ; so the waves of the sea, as they
approach the shore, flow into one another or cross, but
Fig. 20.
currents of melody
66
COMPOSITION.
with a great unity through, all ; and so various lines of
composition often flow harmoniously through and across
each other in a picture. But the most simple and perfect
connexion of lines is by radiation ; that is, by their all
springing from one point, or closing towards it : and this
harmony is often, in Xature almost always, united with the
other ; as the boughs of trees, though they intersect and
play amongst each other irregularly, indicate by their gene-
ral tendency their origin from one root. An essential
part of the beauty of all vegetable form is in this radia-
tion : it is seen most simply in a single flower or leaf, as
in a convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf ; but more beautifully
in the complicated arrangements of the large boughs and
sprays. For a leaf is only a flat piece of radiation ; but
the tree throws its branches on all sides, and even in
every profile view of it, which presents a radiation more
or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beau-
tiful, because varied by the freedom of the separate
branches. I believe it has been ascertained that, in all
trees, the angle at which, in their leaves, the lateral ribs
are set on their central rib is approximately the same at
which the branches leave the great stem ; and thus each
section of the tree would present a kind of magnified
view of its own leaf, were it not for the interfering force
CD
of gravity on the masses of foliage. This force in pro-
portion to their age, and the lateral leverage upon them,
bears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as be-
fore noticed, the lower the bough grows on the stem, the
more it droops (Fig. 17. p. 6-1.) ; besides this, nearly all
beautiful trees have a tendency to divide into two or more
principal masses, which give a prettier and more com-
plicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way up
the centre. Fig. 21. may thus be considered the simplest
type of tree radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In
this figure, however, all secondary ramification is unrep-
COMPOSITION.
67
Fig.
resented, for the sake of simplicity ; but
if we take one half of such a tree, and
merely give two secondary branches to
each main branch (as represented in the
general branch structure shown at b,
Fig. 18. p. 64), we shall have the form,
22. This I consider the perfect
general type of tree struc-
ture ; and it is curiously con-
nected with certain forms
zantine, and Gothic ornamentation, into
discussion of which, however, we must not
enter here. It will be observed, that both in
Figures 21. and 22. all the branches so spring
from the main stem as very nearly to suggest
their united radiation from the root r. This is
by no means universally the case ; but if the branches do
not bend towards a point in the root, they at least converge
to some point or other. In the examples in Fig. 23., the
mathematical centre of cur-
vature, a, is thus, in one case,
on the ground at some dis-
tance from the root, and in
the other, near the top of
the tree. Half, only, of each
tree is given, for the sake of
clearness : Fig. 24. gives both
sides of another example, in
which the origins of curvature are below the root. As the
positions of such points may be varied without end, and as
the arrangement of the lines is also farther complicated
by the fact of the boughs springing for the most part in
a spiral order round the tree, and at proportionate dis-
tances, the systems of curvature which regulate the form
of vegetation are quite infinite. Infinite is a word
68
COMPOSITION.
V
easily said, and easily written, and people do not always
mean it when they say it ; in this case I do A
mean it; the number of systems is incalcu- X
lable, and even to furnish anything like a
representative number of types, I should have
to give several hundreds of figures such as
Fig. 24*
Thus far, however, we have only been
speaking of the great relations of stem and
branches. The forms of the branches them-
selves are regulated by still more subtle laws,
for they occupy an intermediate position
between the form of the tree and of the leaf. f \|
The leaf has a flat ramification ; the tree a I f
completely rounded one ; the bough is aFig. 24?
neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly
balanced between the two, in a half -flattened, half-
rounded flake, closely resembling in shape one of the thick
leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir cone ; by com-
bination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves
compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out
to you the general resemblance of these branch flakes to
an extended hand ; but
they may be more accu-
rately represented by
the ribs of a boat. If
you can imagine a very
broad-headed and flat-
tened boat applied by
its keel to the end of a main branch,f as in Fig. 25.,
* The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these fig-
ures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by com-
passes.
f I hope the reader understands that these woodcuts are merely fac-
similes of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate my
Fig. 25.
COMPOSITION.
GO
the lines which its ribs will take, and the general con-
tour of it, as seen in different directions, from above and
below ; and from one side and another, will give you the
closest approximation to the perspectives and foreshort-
ening of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig- 26. below, is
an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of a healthy young
oak ; and, if you compare it with Fig. 25., you will under-
stand at once the action of the lines of leafage ; the boat
only failing as a type in that its ribs are too nearly paral-
lel to each other at the sides, while the* bough sends all its
ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, that it
may accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole
tree, yet always securing the compliance with the great
universal law that the branches nearest the root bend most
back ; and, of course, throwing some always back as well
as forwards ; the appearance of reversed action being much
increased, and rendered more striking and beautiful, by
perspective. Fig. 25. shows
the perspective of such a
bouo-h as it is seen from be-
low; Fig. 26. gives rudely
the look it would have from
above.
You may suppose, if you
have not already discovered,
what subtleties of perspective
and light and shade are involved in the drawing of these
branch flakes, as you see them in different directions and
actions; now raised, now depressed; touched on the edges
by the wind, or lifted up and bent back so as to show all
the white under surfaces of the leaves shivering in light,
meaning as I write — often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to some-
thing else. This one is really a little too careless ; but it would take
more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat than
the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is.
70
COMPOSITION.
as the bottom of a boat rises white with spray at the surge-
crest; or drooping in quietness towards the dew of the
grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down
under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. S now-
time, by the way,- is one of the best for practice in the
placing of tree masses ; but you will only be able to under-
stand them thoroughly by beginning with a single bough
and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in Fig. IS. p.
64. First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral
ones, as at a; thenVith five, as at b, and so on ; directing
your whole attention to the expression, both by contour
and light and shade, of the boat-like arrangements, which,
in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal con-
fused, partly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the
depth of shade, or absolute blackness of mass required in
those studies.
One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you
out of the wood. You see that in eveiy generally repre-
sentative figure I have surrounded the radiating branches
with a dotted line : such lines do indeed terminate every
vegetable form ; and you see that they are themselves
beautiful curves, which, according to their flow, and the
width or narrowness of the spaces they enclose, character-
ize the species of tree or leaf, and express its free or for-
mal action, its grace of youth or weight of age. So that,
throughout all the freedom of her wildest foliage, Nature is
resolved on expressing an encompassing limit ; and mark-
ing a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising
of its branches from a common root, but by their joining
in one work, and being bound by a common law. And
having ascertained this, let us turn back for a moment to
a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you must al-
ready have observed in your earlier studies, but which it
is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the
branches in the great trees. You must have noticed, I
COMPOSITION.
71
should think, that whenever a leaf is compound, — that is
to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way repeat
or imitate the form of the whole leaf, — those leaflets are
not symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller
on the side towards the point of the great leaf, so as to ex-
press their subordination to it, and show, even when they
are pulled off, that they are not small independent leaves,
but members of one large leaf.
A
Fig. 27.
Fig. 27., which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine,
without its minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the
principle clearly. It is composed of a central large mass,
A, and two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only
is lettered, B. Each of these masses is again composed of
three others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe,
the minor one, a of A, is balanced equally by its opposite;
but the minor h 1 of B is larger than its opposite lj 2.
Again, each of these minor masses is divided into three;
but while the central mass, a of A, is symmetrically di-
72
COMPOSITION.
vided, the b of B is unsym metrical, its largest side-lobe
being lowest. Again b 2, the lobe c 1 (its lowest lobe in
relation to b) is larger than c 2 ; and so also in h 1. So
that universally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger
than the other, and the smaller lobe is that which is nearer
the central mass ; the lower leaf, as it were by courtesy,
subduing some of its own dignity or power, in the imme-
diate presence of the greater or captain leaf ; and always
expressing, therefore, its own subordination and secondary
character. This law is carried oat even in single leaves.
As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point of the
spray, is always the smaller ; and a slightly different curve,
more convex at the springing, is used for the lower side,
giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf;
so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every
subordinate leaf throughout the tree, is made to depend
on its confession of its own lowliness and subjection.
And now, if we bring together in one view the princi-
ples we have ascertained in trees, we shall find they may
be summed under four great laws ; and that all perfect *
vegetable form is appointed to express these four laws in
noble balance of authority.
1. Support from one living root.
2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given
point, either in the root, or in some stated connexion with
it.
3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and
happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action
* Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its natnre de-
pendent, as in runners and climbers ; or which is susceptible of continual
injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure by its
aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of course,
space here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated
apply to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to be familiar to
the student.
COMPOSITION.
73
both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get
its required nourishment from light and rain, by finding
some sufficient breathing-place among the other branches,
or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for any
load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for
any stress of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves ; or play-
ing hither and thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its
young shoots, in their undecided states of mind about their
future life.
4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within
certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and
fraternity with the boughs in its neighbourhood ; and to
work with them according to its power, magnitude, and
state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of the
great curve, and eircumferent stateliness of the Avhole tree.
I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the
moral analogies of these laws ; you may, perhaps, how-
ever, be a little puzzled to see the meeting of the second
one. It typically expresses that healthy human actions
should spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart
motive ; the most beautiful systems of action taking place
when this motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the
action is clearly seen to proceed from it ; while also many
beautiful secondary systems of action taking place from
motives not so deep or central, but in some beautiful sub-
ordinate connexion with the central or life motive.
The other laws, if you think over them, you will find
equally significative; and as you draw trees more and
more in their various states of health and hardship, you
will be every day more struck by the beauty of the types
they present of the truths most essential for mankind to
know ; * and 3-011 will see what this vegetation of the
* There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves
upon the ground ; shadows which are the most likely of all to attract
attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine them, you
4
74
COMPOSITION.
earth, which is necessary to our life, first, as purifying the
air for us and then as food, and just as necessary to our
joy in all places of the earth, — what these trees and leaves,
I say, are meant to teach us as we contemplate them, and
read or hear their lovely language, written or spoken for
us, not in frightful black letters, nor in dull sentences, but
in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and
blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers
of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality.
Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my
reader may be ; but leave it we must, or we shall compose
no more pictures to-day.
This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action
in arising from, or proceeding to, some given point, is
perhaps, of all principles of composition, the most influeii-
tial in producing the beauty of groups of form. Other
laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally
is chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement
of masses in pictures, it is constantly obej7ed by the great
composers ; but, like the law of principality, with careful
concealment of its imperativeness, the point to which the
lines of main curvature are directed being very often far
away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system
of curves will be employed definitely to exalt, by their
will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but that,
through each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in the form
of a round or oval spot ; that is to say, it produces the image of the sun
itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to
the slope of the ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same
effect, when they fall through any small aperture : but the openings be-
tween leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer,
or to attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think
what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun ; and how it may
show us that, even when the opening through which the earth receives
light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the ray of light that
enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear with it His image.
COMPOSITION.
75
concurrence, the value of some leading object, and then
the law becomes traceable enough.
In the instance before us, the principal object being, as
we have seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has de-
termined that his system of curvature should have its origin
in the top of this tower. The diagram Fig. 14. p. 61.,
compared with Fig. 12. p. 51., will show how this is done.
One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the
back of the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of
bent timber. This is a limiting curve of great importance,
and Turner has drawn a considerable part of it with the
edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the eye up
to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of
a ledge in the bank ; then the passage to the tops of the
towers cannot be missed.
The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half
an inch of its course by the rudder ; it is then taken up
by the basket and the heads of the figures, and leads ac-
curately to the tower angle. The gunwales of both the
boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same
point ; and all are centralised by the long reflection which
continues the vertical lines.
Subordinated to this first system of curves there is
another, begun by the small crossing bar of wood inserted
in the angle behind the rudder ; continued by the bottom
of the bank on which the figure sits, interrupted forcibly
beyond it,* but taken up again by the water-line leading
to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate shadows un-
* In the smaller figure (12), it will be seen that this interruption is
caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge ; and this object is
serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the
picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily repre-
sented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation of our point
here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the
curve it begins being indicated by the dashes only.
76
COMPOSITION.
der the arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram,
towards the other extremity of the bridge. This is a most
important curve, indicating that the force and sweep of
the river have indeed been in old times under the large
arches ; while the antiquity of the bridge is told us by the
long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed
down by some minor stream, which has interrupted this
curve, and is now used as a landing-place for the boats,
and for embarkation of merchandise, of which some bales
and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the
great tower. A common composer would have put these
bales to one side or the other, but Turner knows better ;
he uses them as a foundation for his tower, adding to its
importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns a pil-
lar ; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by
throwing the reflection of it far down in the nearer water.
All the great composers have this same feeling about sus-
taining their vertical masses : you will constantly find
Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see, for instance,
the figure with the wheelbarrowT under the great tower, in
the sketch of St. Nicolas, at Prague, and the white group
of figures under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg * ) ;
and Veronese, Titian, and Tintoret continually put their
principal figures at bases of pillars. Turner found out
their secret very early, the most prominent instance of his
composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose Fig. 10.,
already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because,
being another instance of precisely the same arrangement,
it will serve to convince you of its being intentional.
There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is continued
by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller
trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of the
Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.
COMPOSITION.
77
bushes radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point
behind the farmer's head ; but their outline curves are
carried on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by
the curves of the dog and boy — by the way, note the re-
markable instance in these of the use of darkest lines
towards the light ; — all more or less guiding the eye up to
the right, in order to bring it finally to the Keep of
Windsor, which is the central object of the picture, as the
bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which the
boy climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in
direction and character, with these greater curves ; thus
corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor tongue of
land in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to
another law, which we must consider separately.
6. The Law of Contrast. — Of course the character of
everything is best manifested by Contrast. Rest can only
be enjoyed after labour; sound, to be heard clearly, must
rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness, dark-
ness by light; and so on in all things. Eow in art every
colour has an opponent colour, which, if brought near it,
will relieve it more completely than any other ; so, also,
every form and line may be made more striking to the eye
by an opponent form or line near them ; a curved line is
set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and
so on ; and in all good work nearly double the value, which
any given colour or form would have uncombined, is given
to each by contrast.*
In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the
artifice vulgarises a picture. Great painters do not com-
monly, or very visibly, admit violent contrast. They in-
* If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer's representing1 a coat
of arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the concave
curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage carried
round it in front ; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in
opposing the rich folds of the dresa.
78
COMPOSITION.
troduce it by stealth and with intermediate links of tender
change ; allowing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the
mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.*
Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 15., the main
current of the lines being downwards, in a convex swell,
they are suddenly stopped at the lowest tower by a counter
series of beds, directed nearly straight across them. This
adverse force sets off and relieves the great curvature, but
it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines below,
which at first sympathise with the oblique bar, then gradu-
ally get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the
great curve. No passage, however intentionally monoto-
nous, is ever introduced by a good artist without some slight
counter current of this kind ; so much, indeed, do the great
composers feel the necessity of it, that they will even do
things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give
greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skil-
ful poet's versification the so-called bad or inferior lines
are not inferior because he could not do them better, but
because he feels that if all were equally weighty, there
would be no real sense of weight anywhere ; if all were
equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing ;
and he purposely introduces the labouring or discordant
verse, that the full ring may be felt in his main sentence,
and the finished sweetness in his chosen rhythm. f And
* Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to
oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set
behird dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's
edge
f " A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
But with the occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force ; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."
Essay <m Criticism.
COMPOSITION.
79
continually in painting, inferior artists destroy their work
by giving too much of all that they think is good, while the
great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes
to an opposite kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state
of enjoyment: he gives a passage of rich, involved, ex-
quisitely wrought colour, then passes away into slight, and
pale, and simple colour; he paints for a minute or two
with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spec-
tator thinks, slovenly ; but he is not slovenly : you could
not have taken any more decision from him just then;
you have had as much as is good for you ; he paints over
a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded
and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a
freak, gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless
blackthorn. Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle
contrast in the world of painting is the arrow point, laid
sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair
of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very
little contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire
group of forms interesting which would otherwise have
been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque ma-
terial, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 28.,
80
COMPOSITION.
tiles and stones and sloping roof not disagreeably min-
gled; but all would have been unsatisfactory if there had
not happened to be that iron ring on the inner wall, which
by its vigorous black circular line precisely opposes all
the square and angular characters of the battlements and
roof.
Draw the tower without the ring, and see what a differ-
ence it will make.
One of the most important applications of the law of
contrast is in association with the law of continuity, caus-
ing an unexpected but gentle break in a continuous series.
This artifice is perpetual in music, and perpetual also m
good illumination ; the wTay in which little surprises of
change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of
ornamental design, being one of the most subtle character-
istics of the work of the good periods. We take, for in-
stance, a bar of ornament between two written columns of
an early 14th century MS., and at the first glance we sup-
pose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed
of a winding tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a
scarlet bud. Presently, however, we see that, in order to
observe the law of principality, there is one large scarlet
leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which forms a
centre to the whole rod; and when we begin to examine
the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let a
stand for scarlet bud, b for blue leaf, c for two blue leaves
on one stalk, s for a stalk without a leaf, and r for the
large red leaf. Then counting from the ground, the order
begins as follows :
b, b, a ; b, s, b, a ; 5, b, a ; b, 6, a ; and we think we shall
have two 5's and a all the way, when suddenly it becomes
b, a ; bj r ; b, a ; b, a ; b, a ; and we think we are going to
have b, a continued ; but no: here it becomes b, s ; b, s; b,
a ; b, s ; b, s ; c, s ; b, s ; b, s ; and we think we are surely
going to have b, s continued, but behold it runs away to
COMPOSITION.
81
the end with a quick h, 7>, a ; b, 5, b, d ! * Very often, how-
ever, the designer is satisfied with one surprise, but I never
saw a good illuminated border without one at least ; and
no series of any kind is ever introduced by a great com-
poser in a painting without a snap somewhere. There is
a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome, with the large
balustrade for a foreground in the Hake well's Italy series :
the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the
street below through the gap, simply makes the whole
composition right, when otherwise, it would have been
stiff and absurd.
If you look back to Fig. 28. you will see, in the arrange-
ment of the battlements, a simple instance of the use of
such variation. The whole top of the tower, though actu-
ally three sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous
series of five masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat
square and blank ; then the next two higher and richer,
the tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups
being couples, there is enough monotony in the series to
make a change pleasant ; and the last battlement, there-
fore, is a little higher than the first two, — a little lower
than the second two, — and different in shape from either.
Hide it with your finger, and see how ugly and formal
the other four battlements look.
There are in this figure several other simple illustrations
of the laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape
of the walls' mass being square, it is well, still for the sake
of contrast, to oppose it not only by the element of curv-
ature, in the ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that
of sharpness ; hence the pleasure which the eye takes in
the projecting point of the roof. Also because the walls
are thick and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength
* I am describing from an MS. , circa 1300, of Gregory's Decretalia,
in my own possession.
4*
82
COMPOSITION.
with weakness ; therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude
of this roof as it sinks between them. The whole mass
being nearly white, we want a contrasting shadow some-
where ; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This
shade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another
pointed mass, necessary to the first by the law of repeti-
tion. Hide this inferior angle with your finger, and see
how ugly the other looks. A sense of the law of sym-
metry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share
in the feeling with which yon look at the battlements ;
there is a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of their
top, on one side down to the left, on the other to the right.
Still less would you think the law of radiation had any-
thing to do with the matter : but if you take the extreme
point of the black shadow on the left for a centre, and
follow first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will
lead you, if you continue it, to the point of the tower cor-
nice ; follow the second curve, the top of the tiles of the
wrall, and it will strike the top of the right-hand battle-
ment ; then draw a curve from the highest point of the
angle battlement on the left, through the points of the
roof and its dark echo ; and you will see how the whole
top of the tower radiates from this lowest dark point.
There are other curvatures crossing these main ones, to
keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve
of the npper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest
battlement ; and the stones indicated at the right-hand
side of the tower are more extended at the bottom, in
order to get some less direct expression of sympathy, such
as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general
flow of the curves from left to right.
You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws
are indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition.
But as you study longer, you will discover that these laws,
and many more, are obeyed by the powerful composers in
COMPOSITION.
83
every touch : that literally, there is never a dash of their
pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of this
kind in twenty various ways at once ; and that there is
as much difference, in way of intention and authority,
between one of the great composers ruling his colours, and
a common painter confused by them, as there is between
a general directing the march of an army, and an old lady
carried off her feet by a mob.
7. The Law of Interchange. — Closely connected with the
law of contrast is a law which enforces the unity of
opposite things^ by giving to each a portion of the character
of the other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two
masses of colour, all the way down — suppose blue and
white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal, partly on one
division, partly on the other, you will find it pleasant to
the eye if you make the part of the animal blue which
comes upon the white half, and white which comes upon
the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the
sake of perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of
delight in interchange of colour, since, in all ornamenta-
tion whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of
good design.
Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of con-
trasts ; as that, after red has been for some time on one
side, and blue on the other, red shall pass to blue's side
and blue lo red's. This kind of alternation takes place
simply in four-quartered shields ; in more subtle pieces of
treatment, a little bit only of each colour is carried into
the other, and they are as it were dovetailed together.
One of the most curious facts which will impress itself
upon you, when you have drawn some time carefully from
Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of inten-
tional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind
, are produced by her; the artistry with which she will
darken a tree trunk as long as it comes against light sky,
84:
COMPOSITION.
and throw sunlight on it precisely at the spot where it
comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all her masses
of shade and colour, is so great, that if you only follow her
closely, every one who looks at your drawing with atten-
tion will think that you have been inventing the most
artificially and unnaturally delightful interchanges of
shadow that could possibly be devised by human wit.
You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at
length by Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade : it
seems, of all his principles of composition, to be the one
he is most conscious of ; many others he obeys by instinct,
but this he formally accepts and forcibly declares.
The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of
course, to teach us how opposite natures may be helped
and strengthened by receiving each, as far as they can,
some impress or imparted power, from the other.
8. The Law of Consistency. — Breadth. — It is to be re-
membered, in the next place, that while contrast exhibits
the characters of things, it very often neutralises or
paralyses their power. A number of white things may be
shown to be clearly white by opposition of a black thing,
but if we want the full power of their gathered light, the
black thing may be seriously in our way. Thus, while
contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy which
employ them, concentrating the power of several into a
mass. And, not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life,
the wisdom of man is continually called upon to reconcile
these opposite methods of exhibiting, or using, the materials
in his power. By change he gives them pleasantness, and
by consistency value ; by change he is refreshed, and by
perseverance strengthened.
LXence many compositions address themselves to the
spectator by aggregate force of colour or line, more than
by contrasts of cither ; many noble pictures are painted
almost exclusively in various tones of red, or grey, or
COMPOSITION.
85
gold, so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of
flush, or glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being
exhibited only by slight and subtle use of contrast. Simi-
larly as to form ; some compositions associate massive
and rugged forms, others slight and graceful ones, each
with few interruptions by lines of contrary character.
And, in general, such compositions possess higher sub-
limity than those which are more mingled in their ele-
ments. They tell a special tale, and summon a definite
state of feeling, while the grand compositions merely
please the eye.
This unity or breadth of character generally attaches
most to the works of the greatest men ; their separate pic-
tures have all separate aims. We have not, in each, grey
colour set against sombre, and sharp forms against soft,
and loud passages against low : but we have the bright
picture, with its delicate sadness ; the sombre picture, with
its single ray of relief ; the stern picture, with only one
tender group of lines ; the soft and calm picture, with only
one rock angle at its flank ; and so on. Hence the variety
of their work, as well as its impressiveness. The princi-
pal hearing of this lavj, however, is on the separate mass-
es or divisions of a picture : the character of the whole
composition may be broken or various, if we please, but
there must certainly be a tendency to consistent assem-
blage in its divisions. As an army may act on several
points at once, but can only act effectually by having
somewhere formed and regular masses, and not wholly
by skirmishers ; so a picture may be various in its ten-
dencies, but must be somewhere united and coherent in
its masses. Good composers are always associating their
colours in great groups; binding their forms together
by encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexteri-
ties of expedient, what they themselves call "breadth:"
that is to say, a large gathering of each hind of thing
86
COMPOSITION.
into one place ; light being gathered to light, darkness
to darkness, and colour to colour. If, however, this be
done by introducing false lights or false colours, it is
absurd and monstrous ; the skill of a painter consists in
obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his objects,
not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an
easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another
all black or brown ; but not an easy matter to assemble
all the circumstances which will naturally produce white
in one place, and brown in another. Generally speak-
ing, however, breadth will result in sufficient degree
from fidelity of study : Nature is always broad ; and if
you paint her colours in true relations, you will paint
them in majestic masses. If you find your work look
broken and scattered, it is, in all probability, not only ill
composed, but untrue.
The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or
scattering of light and colour, has a certain contrasting
charm, and is occasionally introduced with exquisite effect
by good composers.* Still, it is never the mere scatter-
ing, but the order discernible through this scattering,
which is the real source of pleasure ; not the mere multi-
tude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken
lights in the work of a good painter wander like flocks
upon the hills, not unshepherded ; speaking of life and
peace : the broken lights of a bad painter fall like hail-
stones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving it to be
wished they were also of dissolution.
9. The Law of Harmony. — This last law is not, strictly
speaking, so much one of composition as of truth, but it
* One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is
little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scat-
tered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great
part of their power to infinitude of division ; order being marked through
this division.
COMPOSITION.
87
must guide composition, and is properly, therefore, to be
stated in this place.
Good drawing is, as we have seen, an abstract of natural
facts ; you cannot represent all that you would, but must
continually be falling short, whether you will or no, of
the force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that
your means and time do not admit of your giving the
depth of colour in the scene, and that you are obliged to
paint it paler. If you paint all the colours proportion-
ately paler, as if an equal quantity of tint had been
washed away from each of them, you still obtain a har-
monious, though not an equally forcible statement of
natural fact. But if you take away the colors unequally,
and leave some tints nearly as deep as they are in Nature,
while others are much subdued, you have no longer a true
statement. You cannot say to the observer, " Fancy all
those colours a little deeper, and you will have the actual
fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes away,
something is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of
harmony.
It will happen, however, much more frequently, that
you have to darken the whole system of colours, than to
make them paler. You remember, in your first studies
of colour from Nature, you were to leave the passages of
light Avhich were too bright to be imitated, as white paper.
J3ut, in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to
put colour into them ; and then the other colours must be
made darker, in some fixed relation to them. If you
deepen all proportionately, though the whole scene is
darker than reality, it is only as if you were looking at the
reality in a lower light: but if, while you darken some of
the tints, you leave others undarkeued, the picture is out
of harmony, and will not give the impression of truth.
It is not, indeed, possible to deepen all the colors so
much as to relieve the lights in their natural degree; you
S3
COMPOSITION.
would merely sink most of your colours, if you tried to do
so, into a broad mass of blackness : but it is quite possible
to lower tliem harmoniously, and yet more in some parts
of the picture than in others, so as to allow you to show
the light you want in a visible relief. In well-harmonised
pictures this is done by gradually deepening the tone of
the picture towards the lighter parts of it, without materi-
ally lowering it in the very dark parts ; the tendency in
such pictures being, of course, to include large masses of
middle tints. But the principal point to be observed in
doing this, is to deepen the individual tints without dirty-
ing or obscuring them. It is easy to lower the tone of the
picture by washing it over with grey or brown ; and easy
to see the effect of the landscape, when its colours are thus
universally polluted with black, by using the black convex
mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying
nature and degrading art which ever was put into an
artist's hand.* For the thing required is not to darken
pale yellow by mixing grey with it, but to deepen the pure
yellow ; not to darken crimson by mixing black with it,
but by making it deeper and richer crimson : and thus the
required effect could only be seen in Nature, if you had
pieces of glass of the colour of every object in your land-
scape, and of every minor hue that made up those colours,
and then could see the real landscape through this deep
gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this
with glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work;
that is to say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep
gold for pale gold, and so on, in the proportion you need ;
and then you may paint as forcibly as you choose, but
* I fully believe that the strange grey gloom, accompanied by consid-
erable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art, must be
owing to the use of this mischievous instrument ; the French landscape
always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror,
and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its perversion.
COMPOSITION.
89
your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of
Caravaggio or Spagnoletto, or any other of the black
slaves of painting.*
Supposing those scales of colour, which I told von to
prepare in order to show yon the relations of colour to
grey, were quite accurately made, and numerous enough,
you would have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a
deeper toue in any given mass of colour, than to substitute
for each of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the
scale as you wanted, that is to say, if you want to deepen
the whole two degrees, substituting for the yellow No. 5.
the yellow No. 7., and for the red No. 9. the red No. 11.,
and so on: but the hues of any object in Nature are far
too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so
mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of
the whole matter clearly by taking a group of colours out
of your scale, arranging them prettily, and then washing
them all over with grey : that represents the treatment of
Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group
of colours, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the
scale ; and that will represent the treatment of Nature by
Titian.
You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right
of the thing by working from Nature.
The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of
this kind is a good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky
with some white clouds in it. Paint the clouds in true
and tenderly gradated white ; then give the sky a bold
full blue, bringing them well out ; then paint the trunk
and leaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing
dark green and brown as you see they will bear. After-
wards proceed to more complicated studies, matching the
* Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in
their bearing on the ideal of painting-, in Modern Painters, vol iv. chap,
iii.
90
COMPOSITION.
colours carefully first by your old method ; then deepen-
ing each colour with its own tint, and being careful, above
all things, to keep truth of equal change when the colours
are connected with each other, as in dark and light sides
of the same object. Much more aspect and sense of har-
mony are gained by the precision with which you observe
the relation of colours in dark sides and light sides, and the
influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy
of added depth in independent colours.
This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the
most important of those which the artist has to regard.
But there are all kinds of harmonies in a picture, accord-
ing to its mode of production. There is even a harmony
of touch. If you paint one part of it very rapidly and
forcibly, and another part slowly and delicately, each divi-
sion of the picture may be right separately, but they will
not agree together : the whole will be effectless and value-
less, out of harmony. Similarly, if you paint one part of
it by a yellow light in a warm day, and another by a grey
light in a cold day, though both may have been sunlight,
and both may be well toned, and have their relative shad-
ows truly cast, neither will look like light : they will
destroy each other's power, by being out of harmony.
These are only broad and definable instances of discord-
ance ; but there is an extent of harmony in all good work
much too subtle for definition ; depending on the draughts-
man's carrying everything he draws up to just the balan-
cing and harmonious point, in finish, and colour, and depth
of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and style of touch,
all considered at once ; and never allowing himself to
lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing
at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and
coldly in another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's
etchings, you will be able, I think, to feel the nature of
harmonious treatment in a simple kind, by comparing
COMPOSITION.
91
them with any of Riehter's illustrations to the numerous
German story-books lately published at Christmas, with
all the German stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is
often incomplete in character and poor in incident, but,
as drawing, it is perfect in harmony. The pure and sim-
ple effects of daylight which he gets by his thorough
mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unrivalled,
as far as I know, by any other work executed with so few
touches. His vignettes to Grimm's German stories, already
recommended, are the most remarkable in this quality.
Eichter's illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high
stamp as respects understanding of human character, with
infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy ; but, as
drawings, they are almost unendurably out of harmony,
violent blacks in one place being continually opposed to
trenchant white in another ; and, as is almost sure to be
the case with bad harmonists, the local colour hardly felt
anywhere. All German work is apt to he out of harmony,
in consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation,
and its wilful refusals of fact ; as well as by reason of a
feverish kind of excitement, which dwells violently on par-
ticular points, and makes all the lines of. thought in the
picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electri-
fied ; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant
leopard, and as strong.
I have now stated to you all the laws of composition
which occur to me as capable of being illustrated or de-
fined ; but there are multitudes of others which, in the
present state of my knowledge, I cannot define, and others
which I never hope to define; and these the most impor-
tant, and connected with the deepest powers of -the art.
Among those which I hope to be able to explain when I
have thought of them more, are the laws which relate to
nobleness and ighobleness; that ignobleness especially
which we commonly call " vulgarity," and which, in its
92
COMPOSITION.
essence, is one of the most curious subjects of inquiry con-
nected with human feeling. Among those which I never
hope to explain, are chiefly laws of expression, and others
bearing simply on simple matters ; but, for that very rea-
son, more influential than any others. These are, from the
first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are ; it being
just as impossible, I think, to explain why one succession
of musical notes * shall be noble and pathetic, and such as
might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why an-
other succession is base and ridiculous, and would be fit
only for the reasonably good ear of Bottom, as to explain
why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness. The best
part of every great work is always inexplicable : it is good
because it is good ; and innocently gracious, opening as
the green of the earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.
But though you cannot explain them, you may always
render yourself more and more sensitive to these higher
qualities by the discipline which you generally give to
your character, and this especially with regard to the
choice of incidents ; a kind of composition in some sort
easier than the artistical arrangements of lines and colours,
but in every sort nobler, because addressed to deeper
feelings.
For instance, in the " Datur Hora Quieti," the last vi-
gnette to Roger's Poems, the plough in the foreground has
three purposes. The first purpose is to meet the stream
of sunlight on the river, and make it brighter by opposi-
tion; but any dark object whatever would have done this.
Its second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the ca-
* In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight occasioned by
their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned
about ; we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot reason any
refractory person into liking it, if they do not : and yet there is distinctly
a right and a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad taste respecting it,
as also in music.
COMPOSITION.
93
dence of the group of the two ships, and thus give a
greater expression of repose; but two sitting figures would
have done this. Its third and chief, or pathetic, purpose
is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the vessels also being
moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of hu-
man labour closed with the close of day. The parts of
it on which the hand leans are brought most clearly
into sight ; and they are the chief dark of the picture, be-
cause the tillage of the ground is required of man as a
punishment ; but they make the soft light of the setting
sun brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These
thoughts may never occur to us as we glance carelessly at
the design ; and yet their under current assuredly affects
the feelings, and increases, as the painter meant it should,
the impression of melancholy, and of peace.
Again, in the " Lancaster Sands," which is one of the
plates I have marked as most desirable for your posses-
sion, the stream of light which falls from the setting sun
on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some
force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the in-
cident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an
angry seagull at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as
the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a
foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the
anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the sea's ad-
vance just as surely as the abandoned plough told us of
the ceased labour of the day.
It is not, however, so much in the selection of single
incidents of this kind as in the feeling which regulates
the arrangement of the whole subject that the mind of a
great composer is known. A single incident may be sug-
gested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be
for the heading a chapter. But the great composers so
arrange all their designs that one incident illustrates an-
ts o
other, just as one colour relieves another. Perhaps the
94
COMPOSITION".
" Heysham," of the Yorkshire series which, as to its local-
it}7, may be considered a companion to the last drawing
we have spoken of, the " Lancaster Sands," presents as in-
teresting an example as we could find of Turner's feeling
in this respect. The subject is a simple north-country
village, on the shore of Morecambe Bay ; not in the com-
mon sense a picturesque village : there are no pretty bow-
windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the
rustic doors, or quaint gables ; nothing but a single street
of thatched and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a
somewhat monotonous line, the roofs so green with moss
that at first we hardly discern the houses from the fields
and trees. The village street is closed at the end by a
wooden gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the
road through it, and giving it something the look of a
large farmstead, in which a right of way lies through
the yard. The road which leads to this gate is full of
ruts, and winds clown a bad bit of hill between two
broken banks of moor ground, succeeding immediately
to the few enclosures which surround the village; they can
hardly be called gardens; but a decayed fragment or two
of fencing fill the gaps in the bank ; and a clothes-line, with
some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock,
is stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows ;
a very small haystack and pigstye being seen at the back
of the cottage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumber-
ing cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge wooden col-
lars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the
leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being
about country dinner-time. At the end of the village there
is a better house, with three chimneys and a dormer win-
dow in its roof, and the roof is of stone shingle instead of
thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt the cler-
gyman's; there is some smoke from one of its chimneys,
none from any other in the village ; this smoke is from
COMPOSITION.
95
the lowest chimney at the back, evidently that of the
kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire not having been
long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's
house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from
the cottage onlv bv its low-arched belfrv, a little neater
than one would expect in such a village ; perhaps lately
built by the Puseyite incumbent ; * and beyond the
church, close to the sea, are two fragments of a border
war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn on its
brow deep into edges and furrows by the feet of the Tillage
children. On the bank of moor, which forms the fore-
ground, are a few cows, the carter's dog barking at a vix-
enish one : the milkmaid is feeding another, a gentle
white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of a
handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in her
blue apron, fastened up round her waist ; she stands with
her pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she
has a neat bodice, and pretty sti^ed petticoat under the
blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd,
barefooted, stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for
the ground is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet) ; —
whether boy or girl we are not sure ; it may be a boy,
with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of
ragged trowsers on; probably the first, as the old bonnet
is evidently useful to keep the sun out of our eyes when
we are "looking for strayed cows among the moorland hoi-
lows, and helps us at present to watch (holding the bon-
net's edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish cow with the
dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow to proceed
* uPuseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing- was
made ; but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called ec-
clesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms
one of the principal elements of Puseyism," — I use this word regret-
fully, no other existing which will serve for it, — had been known and
felt in our wild northern districts long before.
96
COMPOSITION.
without any interference. A little to the right the hay is
being got in, of which the milkmaid has. just taken her
apronful to the white cow; but the hay is very thiu, and
cannot well be raked up because of the rocks ; we must
glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind
the willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard
together, kneeling against the rock's edge, to carry it safe-
ly to the hay-cart without dropping any. Beyond the vil-
lage is a rocky hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag
or two of limestone emerging here and there, with pleas-
ant tnrf on their brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds
against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as golden as
the moss, stretches down behind it towards the sea. A
single cottage just shows its roof over the edge of the hill,
looking seaward; perhaps one of the village shepherds is
a sea captain now, and may have built it there, that his
mother may first see the sails of his ship whenever it runs
into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the border
tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the
sand in long curved lines, slowly ; shadows of cloud, and
gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating — miles
away; but no sail is visible, not one fisherboat on the
beach, not one dark speck on the qniet horizon. Beyond
all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with
rosy light on all their crags.
I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of
harmony there is in this composition ; the entire purpose
of the painter to give us the impression of wild, yet
gentle, country life, monotonous as the succession of the
noiseless waves, patient and enduring as the rocks ; but
peaceful, and full of health and quiet hope, and sancti-
fied by the pure mountain air and baptismal dew of
heaven, falling softly between days of toil and nights of
innocence.
All noble composition of this kind can be reached only
COMPOSITION.
97
by instinct : yon cannot set yourself to arrange such a sub-
ject; you may see it, and seize it, at all times, but never
laboriously invent it. And your power of discerning what
is best in expression, among natural subjects, depends
wholly on the temper in which you keep your own mind ;
above all, on your living so much alone as to allow it to
become acutely sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy
life of modern days is wholly incompatible with any true
perception of natural beauty. If you go down into Cum-
berland by the railroad, live in some frequented hotel, and
explore the hills with merry companions, however much
you may enjoy your tour or their conversation, depend
upon it you will never choose so much as one pictorial sub-
ject rightly ; you will not see into the depth of any. But
take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short
day's journeys — ten or twelve miles a day — taking a week
from some starting-place sixty or seventy miles away : sleep
at the pretty little wayside inns, or the rough village ones ;
then take the hills as they tempt you, following glen or
shore as your eye glances or your heart guides, wholly
scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything which
it is the ordinary traveller's duty to see, or pride to do.
Never force yourself to admire anything when you are
not in the humour ; but never force yourself away from
what you feel to be lovely, in search of anything better :
and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world will
unfold themselves to yon in still increasing fulness of pas-
sionate power; and your difficulty will be no more to seek
or to compose subjects, but only to choose one from among
the multitude of melodious thoughts with which you will
be haunted, thoughts which will of course be noble or
original in proportion to your own depth of character
and general power of mind : for it is not so much by the
consideration you give to any single drawing, as by the
previous discipline of your powers of thought, that the
98
COMPOSITION.
character of your composition will be determined. Sim-
plicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement
and modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and
pomp of daily life will make you enjoy coarse colours and
affected forms. Habits of patient comparison and accu-
rate judgment will make your art precious, as they will
make your actions wise ; and every increase of noble en-
thusiasm in your living spirit will be measured by the
reflection of its light upon the works of your hands.
Elements of Drawing, 167-220.
10. The Law of Selv. — In true composition everything
not only helps everything else a little, but helps with its
utmost power. Every atom is in full and kindly energy.
Not a line, nor speck of colour, but is doing its very best.
The extent to which this law is carried in truly right and
noble work is wholly incomprehensible to the ordinary
observer, and no true account of it would be believed. JSTo
one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the
folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential
effect on each other. 5 M. P., part viii., ch. 1, § 2.
See this law of help illustrated with great subtility in the
composition of " The Loire Side " (plate 73, 5 M. P.). Hide
with your finger the little ring on the stone, and you
will find the river has stopped flowing. That ring is to
repeat the curved lines of the river bank, which express
its current, and bring the feeling of them down to us.
The least thing helps to express the motive of the picture,
■ — which is not only repose, but the indolent repose of an
out wearied people, not caring much what becomes of them.
The road covered with litter, the crockery left outside the
cottage to dry in the sun after being washed up, the black
vine trellis pointing to the massive building in the dis-
tance— these and other accessories help to unite the compo-
sition and express its idea. 5 M. P., part viii., ch. 2, § 4.
COMPOSITION.
99
The editor adds the following laws of grouping, collect-
ed from his author and others, and in some particulars
already anticipated, but important to be seen by the stu-
dent as a system of rules and principles.
11. Laws of Grouping. — Grouping is the arrangement
of figures or objects in natural or pleasing positions. It is
observable in nature, that in a concourse of people, they
form themselves into different companies according to ages,
conditions, or inclinations, and these divisions are called
groups.
There is reason to believe that Zeuxis, who nourished
400 years b. c, and who simplified composition and im-
proved colouring, was the first to teach the true method of
grouping ; at least, from the descriptions by Pausanias, it
would evidently seem that in all pictures anterior to this
age, the figures were ranged in lines of parallel perspec-
tive, without depth or distance, and without any principal
group on which the interest might centre, even so late as
Panenas, the brother of Phidias, 450 b. c. The different
distances were represented by the very inartificial and
ungracious means of placing the figures in rows one above
another. Effective linear grouping, however, was not
known until the revived knowledge, extended and applied,
of linear perspective by Verrochio and his pupil, Da
Vinci, in the fifteenth century.
The Principal Laws of Groups. — (1) The group must
grow out of the subject.
(2) The group must contain all that distinguishes it
from other subjects, and omit nothing that is character-
istic and exclusively its own.
(3) The group must admit nothing that is superfluous
or commonplace.
(4) Each figure must have its own individuality.
(5) Each group must have a principal figure as a centre
of interest. As an exception to this rule P. Veronese, in
100
COMPOSITION.
his picture of the Marriage of Cana, puts Christ at the re-
mote end of the table, in no prominence whatever, his ob-
ject being to display the figures and splendid dresses of
the Venetian nobility, rather than illustrate a fact in sacred
history.
(6) The eye of the spectator must be led to the prin-
cipal figure by its receiving an emphasis or focus of light
and colour. Veronese again departs from rule in his
picture of "Perseus and Andromeda," by putting An-
dromeda, the chief figure, in shadow.
Note. — Where numerous figures are huddled together
without the focus of a chief figure, there is massing but
no grouping.
(7) Every group must have an emphasis or focus of
shadow.
(8) Every group must have a true lineal perspective.
Even when the group is in the horizontal form, as in Da
Vinci's "Last Supper," there is a horizontal perspective.
12. Number of Figures in Groups. — The figures of the
group must be neither too numerous nor too crowded ;
but a number that would appear a crowd and a confusion
in one picture might be indispensable to another. Sir
Joshua Reynolds supposes that Paul Veronese, who was
fond of brilliant assemblies, would say that the number
of figures in an effective group should not be less than
forty. Annibale Carracci said that no more than twelve
could be included with advantage. Sophocles never ad-
mitted more than three figures on the stage at once. The
number must be determined by the subject, and left to
the judgment of the painter. David's picture of the
" Coronation of Napoleon " has 210 personages, 80 of
whom are full length. Veronese's "Marriage at Cana"
has 160 figures, life size. Tintoretto's " Paradise " has 500
figures. It is evident, therefore, that there can be no rule
as to numbers of figures admissible in a group.
COMPOSITION.
101
13. Principal and Subordinate Groups. — (1) If the
figures be numerous, it is usual, if not necessary, to
divide them into principal and subordinate or accessory
groups.
(2) Between the divisions of a group, one of which, as
we have said, must be a principal group as a focus from
which the composition is to be developed, and upon which
the whole picture is to be constructed, there must be unity
of sentiment, action, and locality.
(3) Group must balance group.
14. The Attitudes of Figures. — (1) The various atti-
tudes of the body must be carefully observed. When one
side of the body bends in, the other will bend out. The
lines of the body should be balanced. If one hand and
arm hang down, the other ought to be raised. If one arm
goes to the right, the other will naturally and generally
go to the left. But formality, stiffness, or posturings,
ought to be carefully avoided, as indicating crude and
pedantic composition.
(2) Leslie says that in a group of several figures, one
must always present its back to the spectator. This is
unavoidable in circular groups, where the spectator is
supposed not to be a party, but to stand outside the circle.
(3) Attitudes and actions are often repeated by the
figures of a group. In Raphael's picture of " Ananias
and Sapphira" there are seven figures in a group on
one side, and seven in a group on the other, and
seven in the middle ; and no one, except Ananias and
Sapphira, performs an action that is not repeated, though
varied.
15. The Form of the Group. — According to the direc-
tion into which the principal lines of a picture or group
fall, the composition is distinguished into angular, circular,
and horizontal.
(1) Angular Grouping.— -a. The diagonal line, the sim-
102
COMPOSITION.
plest form of angular composition, is exceedingly well
adapted for the representation of perspective, especially,
when, for greater range of* effect, the distance is placed
towards one side of the picture.
b. The pyramidal line is the one most approved, espe-
cially by Hogarth, for the effectiveness of a group. The
Laocoon is that form.
c. The diamond or lozenge shape is also well adapted to
groups of four or five figures.
(2) Circular Grouping. — This was Raphael's favourite
form. It is the picturesque form and adapted to grand
subjects. In some, the figures are arranged on the line of
an ellipse, nearly closing up in front of the spectator, who
is supposed to stand on the outside. In others, the eye of
the spectator is led into the depth of the group, arranged
in a semicircle, in front and as a part of which the spec-
tator is supposed to stand. In sacred groups this semi-
circular arrangement seemed to bring the spectator into
its immediate presence.
It is said of P. Veronese, that where he introduced land-
scape backgrounds into his pictures, that trees are lightly
but masterly sketched in, and the other accessories are ar-
ranged in a way so as not to intrude on the centre group.
In his grandest compositions, in which he loved to intro-
duce numerous figures and horses, and in the clouds above
not unfrequently the apotheosis of the blessed, the whole
is arranged in grand and powerful groups. Some of these
groups are so fine that their full merit can hardly be felt
or appreciated at once, almost every head and every figure
being a study in itself. Rarely do we meet with any crude
or unsightly figures in the works of this great painter ; be-
sides, he had an agreeable way of arranging his large com-
positions, contrary to the general rule, so as not to allow
all thought or attention to be directed towards the princi-
pal or speaking figures ; thus the eye is never fatigued by
COMPOSITION.
103
dwelling on one point, but is refreshed by glancing from
one point to another, and is thus able to enjoy those por-
tions of the composition, which, while accessory in some
degree to the story, are yet sufficiently independent to be
considered pictures in themselves.
Some of Raphael's groups, as in the " School of Athens,"
have too little interior unity ; and some, as in the " Trans-
figuration " and picture of " Ananias," are too formal,
almost pedantic.
Ruskin says that in Tintoretto's picture of " Paradise,"
the grouping is so intricate, at the upper part, it is not
easy to distinguish one figure from another, but that the
whole number could. not be below 500. The whole com-
position is divided into concentric zones, represented one
above another like the stories of a cupola, round the fig-
ures of Christ and the Madonna at the central and high-
est point. Between each zone or belt of the nearer figures,
the white distances of heaven are seen filled with floating
spirits.
(3) Horizontal Grouping is distinguished as the form
in which the great Da Vinci arranged the Apostles in his
picture of the " Supper." Our Saviour sits in the middle
of the table, and on either side are two subordinate groups,
of three Apostles each. ISTo one ever criticised the suit-
ableness of the form to the subject, and this suitableness is
the test of its artistic truth.
However, as to the form of groups, Fuseli remarks in
his 5th sect.: " Various are the shapes in which composi-
tion embodies its subject, and presents it to our eye. The
cone or pyramid, the globe, the grape, flame, and stream,
% the circle and its segment lend their figure to elevate, con-
centrate, round, diffuse themselves, or undulate in its
masses."
CHAPTER VI.
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
As I have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the
old masters have never yet been equalled ; and as this is
the first, and nearly the last, concession I shall have to
make to them, I wish it at once to be thoroughly under-
stood how far it extends.
I understand two things by the word " tone : " — first, the
exact relief and relation of objects against and to each other
in substance and darkness, as they are nearer or more dis-
tant, and the perfect relation of the shades of all of them to
the chief light of the picture, whether that be sky, water, or
anything else. Secondly, the exact relation of the colours
of the shadows to the colours of the lights, so that they
• may be at once felt to be merely different degrees of the
same light ; and the accurate relation among the illumi-
nated parts themselves, with respect to the degree in
which they are- influenced by the colour of the light itself,
whether warm or cold ; so that the whole of the picture
(or, where several tones are united, those parts of it which
are under each,) may be felt to be in one climate under
one hind of light, and in one hind of atmosphere ; this
being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and inexplicable
quality of each colour laid on, which makes the eye feel
both what is the actual colour of the object represented,
and that it is raised to its apparent pitch by illumination.
A very bright brown, for instance, out of sunshine, may
be precisely of the same shade of colour as a very dead
or cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally different
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
105
in quality y and that quality by which the illuminated
dead colour would be felt in nature different from the
unilluminated bright one, is what artists are perpetually
aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense about, under
the name of ''tone." The want of tone in pictures is
caused by objects looking bright in their own positive
hue, and not by illumination, and by the consequent want
of sensation of the raising of their hues by light.
The first of these meanings of the word " tone " is
liable to be confounded with what is commonly called
"aerial perspective." But aerial perspective is the
expression of space, by any means whatsoever, sharpness
of edge, vividness of colour, etc., assisted by greater pitch
of shadow, and requires only that objects should be
detached from each other, by degrees of intensity in pro-
portion to their distance, without requiring that^ the
difference between the farthest and nearest should be in
positive quantity the same that nature has put. But
what I have called " tone " requires that there should be
the same sum of difference, as well as -the same division
of differences.
Now the finely-toned pictures of the old masters are, in
this respect, some of the notes of nature played two or
three octaves below her key ; the dark objects in the mid-
dle distance having precisely the same relation to the
light of the skv which they have in nature, but the light
being necessarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the
shadow deepened in the same degree. I have often been
struck, when looking at a camera-obscura on a dark day,
with the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the
finest pictures of the old masters ; all the foliage coming
dark against the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass
but here and there the isolated light of a silvery stem or
an unusually illumined cluster of leafage.
Now if this could be done consistently, and all the
5*
106
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down,
it would be right and necessary so to do: but be it
observed, not only does nature surpass us in power of
obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper,
but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade.
Her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light
whatever is reflected to the eye ; ours are black surfaces
from which, paint as black as we may, a great deal of
light is still reflected, and which, placed against one of
nature's deep bits of gloom, would tell as distinct light.
Here we are' then, with white paper for our highest light,
and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set
to run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her
light, and vacuity for her gloom. It is evident that she
can well afford to throw her material objects dark against
the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and yet give in those
objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances and
tones before she comes to black, or to anything like it —
all the illumined surfaces of her objects being as distinctly
and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest shadows,
as the sky is brighter than those illumined surfaces. But
if we, against our poor, dull obscurity of yellow paint,
instead of sky, insist on having the same relation of shade
in material objects, we go down to the bottom of our scale
at once ; and what in the world are we to do then %
Where are all our intermediate distances to come from ?
— how are we to express the aerial relations among the
parts themselves, for instance, of foliage, whose most
distant boughs are already almost black ? — how are we to
come up from this to the foreground, and when we have
done so, how are we to express the distinction between its
solid parts, already as dark as we can make them, and its
vacant hollows, which nature has marked sharp and clear
and black, among its lighted surfaces? It cannot but be
evident at a glance, that if to any one of the steps from
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
107
one distance to another, we give the same quantity of dif-
ference in pitch of shade which nature does, we must pay
for this expenditure of our means by totally missing half
a dozen distances, not a whit less important or marked,
and so sacrifice a multitude of truths, to obtain one. And
this, accordingly, was the means by which the old masters
obtained their (truth ?) of tone. They chose those steps of
distance which are the most conspicuous and noticeable
— that for instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to
hills — and they gave these their precise pitch of difference
in shade with exquisite accuracy of imitation. Their
means were then exhausted, and they were obliged to leave
their trees flat masses of mere filled-up outline, and to
omit the truths of space in every individual part of their
picture by the thousand. But this they did not care for;
it saved them trouble ; they reached their grand end, imi-
tative effect ; they thrust home just at the places where
the common and careless eye looks for imitation, and
they attained the broadest and most faithful appearance
of truth of tone which art can exhibit.
But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art;
they lavish their whole means to get one truth, and leave
themselves powerless when they should seize a thousand.
And is it indeed worthy of being called a truth, when we
have a vast history given us to relate, to the fulness of
which neither our limits nor our language are adequate,
instead of giving all its parts abridged in the order of
their importance, to omit or deny the greater part of
them, that we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or
three ? Kay, the very truth to which the rest are sacri-
ficed is rendered falsehood by their absence, the relation
of the tree to the sky is marked as an impossibility by the
want of relation of its parts to each other.
Turner starts from the beginning with a totally differ-
ent principle. lie boldly takes pure white (and justly,
108
OF TEUTH OF TONE.
for it is the sign of the most intense sunbeams) for his
highest light, and lampblack for his deepest shade ; and
between these he makes every degree of shade indicative
of a separate degree of distance,* giving each step of
approach, not the exact difference in pitch which it would
have in nature, but a difference bearing the same propor-
tion to that which his sum of possible shade bears to the
sum of nature's shade ; so that an object half way
between his horizon and his foreground, will be exactly
in half tint of force, and every minute division of inter-
mediate space will have just its proportionate share of the
lesser sum, and no more. Hence where the old masters
expressed one distance, he expresses a hundred ; and
where they said furlongs, he says leagues. Which of
these modes of procedure be most agreeable with truth, I
think I may safely leave the reader to decide for himself.
He will see in this very first instance, one proof of what
we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature
is inconsistent with real truth ; for the very means by
which the old masters attained the apparent accuracy of
tone which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled them to
give up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to
represent a few successive and marked stages of distance,
like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible,
multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is
not more careful to separate her nearest bush from her
farthest one, than to separate the nearest bough of that
bush from the one next to it.
Take, for instance, one of the finest landscapes that
ancient art has produced — the work of a really great and
* Of course I am. not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but
of that quantity of depth of shade by which, cceteris paribus, a near
object will exceed a distant one. For the truth of the systems of Tur-
ner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide Chap. IX. pp#
194-200.
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
109
intellectual mind, the quiet Nicholas Poussin, in our own
National Gallery, with the traveller washing his feet.
The first idea we receive from this picture is, that it is
evening, and all the light coming from the horizon. Not
so. It is full noon, the light coming steep from the left,
as is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand
pedestal, — (for if the sun were not very high, that shadow
could not lose itself half way down, and if it were not lat-
eral, the shadow would slope, instead of being vertical.)
Now, ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black
masses of foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but
the outline, be a true representation of trees under noon-
day sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it
necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, and
marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow and
sparkling light. The only truth in the picture is the
exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees and
hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the intricacy
of the foliage, and everything indicative either of the
nature of the light, or the character of the objects, are
unhesitatingly sacrificed. So much falsehood does it cost
to obtain two apparent truths of tone. Or take, as a still
more glaring instance, No. 260 in the Dulwich Gallery,
where the trunks of the trees, even of those farthest off,
on the left, are as black as paint can make them, and
there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of force,
or any marking whatsoever of distance by colour, or any
other means, between* them and the foreground.
Compare with these, Turner's treatment of his mate-
rials in the Mercury and Argus. He has here his light
actually coming from the distance, the sun being nearly
in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of objects
against it would be far more justifiable than in Poussin's
case. But this dark relief is used in its full force only
with the nearest leaves of the nearest group of foliage
110
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
overhanging the foreground from the left : and between
these and the more distant members of the same group,
though only three or four yards separate j distinct aerial
perspective and intervening mist and light are shown ;
while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as
being very near, compared with all the distance, is much
diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group
of leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground.
It is true that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual
pitch of shade against the sky which it would have in
nature ; but it has precisely as much as it possibly can
have, to leave it the same proportionate relation to the
objects near at hand. And it cannot but be evident to
the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery or deception
may be the result of a contrary mode of treatment, this is
the only scientific or essentially truthful system, and that
what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective.
Compare again the last vignette in Rogers's Poems, the
" Datur Hora Quieti," where everything, even the darkest
parts of the trees, is kept pale and full of graduation ;
even the bridge where it crosses the descending stream of
sunshine, rather lost in the light than relieved against it,
until we come up to the foreground, and then the vigor-
ous local black of the plough throws the whole picture
into distance and sunshine. I do not know anything in
art which can for a moment be set beside this drawing
for united intensity of light and repose.
Observe, I am. not at present speaking of the beauty or
desirableness of the system of the old masters ; it may be
sublime, and affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a
great deal more ; but all I am concerned with at present
is, that it is not true / while Turner's is the closest and
most studied approach to truth of which the materials of
art admit.
It was not, therefore, with reference to this division of
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
Ill
the subject that I admitted inferiority iu our great mod-
ern master to Claude or Poussin, but with reference to
the second and more usual meaning of the word "tone"
— the exact relation and fitness of shadow and light, and
of the hues of all objects under them; and more espe-
cially that precious quality of each colour laid on, which
makes it appear a quiet colour illuminated, not a bright
colour in shade. But I allow this inferiority only with
respect to the paintings of Turner, not to his drawings.
I could select from among the works named in Chap. IX.
of this section, pieces of tone absolutely faultless and per-
fect, from the coolest grays of wintry dawn to the intense
fire of summer noon. And the difference between the
prevailing character of these and that of nearly all the
paintings (for the early oil pictures of Turner are far less
perfect in tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to
account for, but on the supposition that there is some-
thing in the material which modern artists in general are
incapable of mastering, and which compels Turner him-
self to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and
more important qualities. The total failures of Callcott,
whose struggles after tone ended so invariably in shiver-
ing winter or brown paint, the misfortune of Landseer
with his evening sky in 1842, the frigidity of Stanfield,
and the earthiness and opacity which all the magnificent
power and admirable science of Etty are unable entirely
to conquer, are too fatal and convincing proofs of the
want of knowledge of means, rather than of the absence
of aim, in modern artists as a body. Yet, with respect to
Turner, however much the want of tone in his early
paintings (the Fall of Carthage, for instance, and others
painted at a time when he was producing the most
exquisite hues of light in water-color) might seem to
favor such a supposition, there are passages in his recent
works (such, for instance, as the sunlight along the sea, in
112
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
the Slaver) which directly contradict it, and which prove
to its that where he now errs in tone, (as in the Cicero's
Villa,) it is less owing to want of power to reach it, than
to the pursuit of some different and nobler end. I shall
therefore glance at the particular modes in which Turner
manages his tone in his present Academy pictures; the
early ones must be given up at once. Place a genuine
untouched Claude beside the Crossing the Brook, and the
difference in value and tenderness of tone will be felt in
an instant, and felt the more painfully because all the cool
and transparent qualities of Claude would have been here
desirable, and in their place, and appear to have been
aimed at. The foreground of the Building of Carthage,
and the greater part of the architecture of the Fall, are
equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them
with genuine passages of Claude's sunshine. There is a
very grand and simple piece of tone in the possession of
J. Allnutt, Esq., a sunset behind willows, but even this is
wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude in its
extreme distance. Isot so with the recent Academy pic-
tures ; many of their passages are absolutely faultless ; all
are refined and marvellous, and with the exception of the
Cicero's Villa, we shall find few pictures painted within
the last ten years which do not either present us with per-
fect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is neces-
sarily sacrificed. If we glance at the requirements of
nature, and her superiority of means to ours, we shall see
why and how it is sacrificed.
Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects,
is either to be considered as neutral and white, bringing
out local colours with fidelity ; or colo ured, and conse-
quently modifying these local tints, with its own. But
the power of pure white light to exhibit local colour is
strangely variable. The morning light of about nine or
ten is usually very pure ; but the difference of its effect on
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
113
different days, independently of mere brilliancy, is as
inconceivable as inexplicable. Every one knows how
capriciously the colours of a fine opal vary from day to
day, and how rare the lights are which bring them fully
out. Now the expression of the strange, penetrating,
deep, neutral light, which, while it alters no colour,
brings every colour up to the highest possible pitch and
key of pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute
of finely-toned pictures by the great colourists as opposed
to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless
of colour, are content, like Cuyp, to lose local tints in the
golden blaze of absorbing light.
Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called,
is a matter far more of feeling than of proof, for any
colour is possible under such lights ; it is meagreness and
feebleness only which are to be avoided ; and these are
rather matters of sensation than of reasoning. But it is
yet easy enough to prove by what exaggerated and false
means the pictures most celebrated for this quality are
endowed with their richness and solemnity of colour. In
the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian, it is difficult to imag-
ine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue
of the distant landscape ; — impossible, not from its vivid-
ness, but because it is not faint and aerial enough to
account for its purity of colour ; it is too dark and blue at
the same time ; and there is indeed so total a want of
atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it
would be impossible to tell the mountains (intended to be
ten miles off) from the robe of Ariadne close to the spec-
tator. Yet make this blue faint, aerial, and distant —
make it in the slightest degree to resemble the truth of
nature's colour — and all the tone of the picture, all its
intensity and splendour, will vanish on the instant. So
again, in the exquisite and inimitable little bit of colour,
the Europa in the Dulwich Gallery ; the blue of the dark
114
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
promontory on the left is thoroughly absurd and impossi-
ble, and the warm tones of the clouds equally so, unless
it were sunset; but the blue especially, because it is
nearer than several points of land which are equally in
shadow, and yet are rendered in warm gray. But the
whole value and tone of the picture would be destroyed if
this blue were altered.
Now, as much of this kind of richness of tone is always
given by Turner as is compatible with truth of aerial
effect ; but he will not sacrifice the higher truths of his
landscape to mere pitch of colour as Titian does. He
infinitely prefers having the power of giving extension of
space, and fulness of form, to that of giving deep melo-
dies of tone ; he feels too much the incapacity of art, with
its feeble means of light, to give the abundance of
nature's gradations ; and therefore it is, that taking pure
white for his highest expression of light, that even pure
yellow may give him one more step in the scale of shade,
he becomes necessarily inferior in richness of effect to the
old masters of tone, (who always used a golden highest
light,) but gains by the sacrifice a thousand more essential
truths. For, though we all know how much more like
light, in the abstract, a finely-toned warm hue will be to
the feelings than white, yet it is utterly impossible to mark
the same number of gradations between such a sobered
high light and the deepest shadow, which we can between
this and white ; and as these gradations are absolutely
necessary to give the facts of form and distance, which, as
we have above shown, are more important than any truths
of tone,* Turner sacrifices the richness of his picture to its
completeness — the manner of the statement to its matter.
And not only is he right in doing this for the sake of
* More important, observe, as matters of truth or fact. It may often
chance that, as a matter of feeling, the tone is the more important of
the two ; but with this we have here no concern. '
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
115
space, but he is right also in the abstract question of colour ;
for as we observed above (p. 112,) it is only the white
light — the perfect ud modified group of rays — which will
bring out local colour perfectly ; and if the picture, there-
fore, is to be complete in its system of colour, that is, if it
is to have each of the three primitives in their purity, it
must have white for its highest light, otherwise the purity
of one of them at least will be impossible. And this leads
us to notice the second and more frequent quality of light,
(which is assumed if we make our highest representation
of it yellow,) the positive hue, namely, which it may itself
possess, of course modifying whatever local tints it exhib-
its, and thereby rendering certain colours necessary, and
certain colours impossible. Under the direct yellow light
of a descending sun, for instance, pure white and pure
blue are both impossible ; because the purest whites and
blues that nature could produce would be turned in some
degree into gold or green by it ; and when the sun is
within half a degree of the horizon, if the sky be clear, a
rose light supersedes the golden one, still more over-
whelming in its effect on local colour. I have seen the
pale fresh green of spring vegetation in the gardens of
Venice, on the Lido side, turned pure russet, or between
that and crimson, by a vivid sunset of this kind, every
particle of green colour being absolutely annihilated.
And so under all coloured lights, (and there are few, from
dawn to twilight, which are not slightly tinted by some
accident of atmosphere,) there is a change of local colour,
which, when in a picture it is so exactly proportioned that
we feel at once both what the local colours are in them-
selves, and what is the colour and strength of the light
upon them, gives us truth of tone.
For expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts
might be chosen out of the good pictures of Cuyp, which
have never been equalled in art. But I much doubt if
116
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
there be a single bright Cuyp in the world, which, taken
as a whole, does not present many glaring solecisms in
tone. I have not seen many fine pictures of his, which
were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some
principal figure, a vermilion totally unaffected and
unwarmed by the golden hue of the rest of the picture ;
and, what is worse, with little distinction, between its own
illumined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether
out of sunshine, the colour of a bright vermilion in dead,
cold daylight. It is possible that the original colour may
have gone down in all cases, or that these parts may have
been villanously repainted : but I am the rather disposed
to believe them genuine, because even throughout the
best of his pictures there are evident recurrences of the
same kind of solecism in other colours — greens for
instance — as in the steep bank on the right of the largest
picture in the Dulwich Gallery; and browns, as in the
lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible
and painful contrast with the one standing beside it,
the flank of the standing one being bathed in breathing
sunshine, and the reposing one laid in with as dead,
opaque, and lifeless brown as ever came raw from a
novice's pallet. And again, in that marked 83, while
the figures on the right are walking in the most precious
light, and those just beyond them in the distance leave a
furlong or two of pure visible sunbeams between us and
them, the cows in the centre are entirely deprived, poor
things, of both light and air. And these failing parts,
though they often escape the eye when we are near the
picture and able to dwell upon what is beautiful in it, yet
so injure its whole effect that I question if there be many
Cuyps in which vivid colours occur, which will not lose
their effect, and become cold and flat at a distance of ten
or twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the
eye is close enough to rest on the right parts without in-
OF TltUTH OF TONE.
117
eluding the whole. Take, for instance, the large one in
our National Gallery, seen from the opposite door, where
the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs,
and the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia
drawing rather than like sunshine, owing chiefly to the
utter want of aerial grays indicated through them.
Now, there is no instance in the works of Turner of
anything so faithful and imitative of sunshine as the best
parts of Cuyp; but at the same time, there is not a single
vestige of the same kind of solecism. It is true, that in
his fondness for colour, Turner is in the habit of allowing
excessively cold fragments in his warmest pictures ; but
these are never, observe, warm colours with no light upon
them, useless as contrasts while they are discords in the
tone ; but they are bits of the very coolest tints, partially
removed from the general influence, and exquisitely valu-
able as colour, though, with all deference be it spoken, I
think them sometimes slightly destructive of what would
otherwise be perfect tone. For instance, the two blue and
white stripes on the drifting flag of the Slave Ship, are, I
think, the. least degree too purely cool. I think both the
blue and white would be impossible under such a light ;
and in the same way the white parts of the dress of the
Napoleon interfered by their coolness with the perfectly
managed warmth of all the rest of the picture. But both
these lights are reflexes, and it is nearly impossible to say
what tones may be assumed even by the warmest light re-
flected from a cool surface ; so that we cannot actually
convict these parts of falsehood, and though we should
have liked the tone of the picture better had they been
slightly warmer, we cannot but like the colour of the pic-
ture better with them as they are ; while Cuyp's failing
portions are not only evidently and demonstrably false,
being in direct light, but are as disagreeable in colour as
false in tone, and injurious to everything near them. And
118
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
the best proof of the grammatical accuracy of the tones of
Turner is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all
his pictures at any distance. We approach only to follow
the sunshine into every cranny of the leafage, and retire
only to feel it diffused over the scene, the whole picture
glowing like a sun or star at whatever distance we stand,
and lighting the air between us and it ; while many even
of the best pictures of Claude must be looked close into
to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. The
smallest of the three seaports in the National Gallery is
valuable and right in tone when we are close to it ; but
ten yards off, it is all brick-dust, offensively and evidently
false in its whole hue.
The comparison of Turner with Cuyp and Claude may
sound strange in most ears ; but this is chiefly because we
are not in the habit of analyzing and dwelling upon those
difficult and daring passages of the modern master which
do not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth,
owing to his habit of uniting two, three, or even more
separate tones in the same composition. In this also he
strictly follows nature, for wherever climate changes, tone
changes, and the climate changes with every 200 feet of
elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in
tone from the lower ones, these from the rest of the land-
scape, and in all probability, some part of the horizon
from the rest. And when nature allows this in a high
degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always will,
she does not herself impress at once with intensity of tone,
as in the deep and quiet yellows of a July evening, but
rather with the magnificence and variety of associated col-
our, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall
gradually find the solemnity and the depth of twenty
tones instead of one. Now in Turner's power of associat-
ing cold with warm light, no one has ever approached, or
even ventured into the same field with him. The old
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
119
masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its
unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches of
relief and change by which nature unites her hours with
each other. They gave the warmth of the sinking sun,
overwhelming all things in its gold; but they did not
give those gray passages about the horizon where, seen
through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night
gather themselves for their victory. Whether it was
in them impotence or judgment, it is not for me to
decide. I have only to point to the daring of Turner
in this respect, as something to which art affords no mat-
ter of comparison, as that in which the mere attempt is,
in itself, superiority. Take the evening effect with the
Temeraire. That picture will not, at the first glance, de-
ceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because
there is in it more than sunlight, because under the blaz-
ing veil of vaulted fire which lights the vessel on her last
path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness, out
of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and
the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold,
deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through
every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look, you
will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has
risen over the vastness of the departing form, l m. p. 138.
CHAPTEE TIL
OF TUENEEIAN LIGHT.
§ 1. Haying seen the grounds (4 M. P., 15) on which
to explain and justify Turner's choice of facts, we pro-
ceed to examine finally those modes of representing
them introduced by him ; — modes so utterly at variance
with the received doctrines on the subject of art, as to
cause his works to be regarded with contempt, or severe
blame, by all reputed judges, at the period of their first
appearance. And, chiefly, I must confirm and farther
illustrate the general statements made respecting light and
shade in the chapters on Truth of Tone, and on Infinity,
deduced from the great fact (p. 106, chapter on Truth
of Tone) that " nature surpasses us in power of obtaining
light as much as the sun surpasses white paper." I found
that this part of the book was not well understood, because
people in general have no idea how much the sun does sur-
pass white paper. In order to know this practically, let
the reader take a piece of pure white drawing-paper, and
place it in the position in which a drawing is usually seen.
This is, properly, upright (all drawings being supposed to
be made on vertical planes), as a picture is seen on a room
wall. Also, the usual place in which paintings or draw-
ings are seen is at some distance from a window, with a
gentle side light* falling upon them, front lights being un-
favorable to nearly all drawing. Therefore the highest
* Light from above is the same thing with reference to our present
inquiry.
OF TUENERIAN LIGIIT.
121
light an artist can ordinarily command for his work is that
of white paint, or paper, under a gentle side light. But
if we wished to get as much light as possible, and to place
the artist under the most favorable circumstances, we
should take the drawing near the window. Put therefore
your white paper upright, and take it to the window. Let
a c, c d, be two sides of your d
room, with a window at b b.
Under ordinary circumstances
your picture would be hung at
e, or in some such position on
the wall c d. First, therefore,
put your paper upright at
and then bring it gradually to
the window, in the successive
positions g, and (opening the '
window) finally at p. You will notice that as you come
nearer the window the light gradually increases on the
paper ; so that in the position atj[?it is far better lighted
than it was at e. If, however, the sun actually falls upon
it at j?,- the experiment is unfair, for the picture is not
meant to be seen in sunshine, and your object is to com-
pare pure white paper, as ordinarily used, with sunshine.
So either take a time when the sun does not shine at all,
or does not'shine in the window where the experiment is
to be tried ; or else keep the paper so far within the win-
dow that the sun may not touch it. Then the experiment
is perfectly fair, and you will find that you have the paper
at p in full, serene, pictorial light, of the best kind, and
highest attainable power.
§ 2. Now, leaning a little over the window sill, bring
the edge of the paper at p against the sky, rather low
down on the horizon (I suppose you choose a fine day for
the experiment, that the sun is high, and the sky clear
blue, down to the horizon). The moment you bring your
6
122
OF TUENEEIAN LIGHT.
white paper against the sky you will be startled to find
this bright white paper suddenly appear in shade. You
Will draw it back, thinking you have changed its position.
But no ; the paper is not in shade. It is as bright as ever
it was ; brighter than under ordinary circumstances it
ever can be. But, behold, the blue sky of the horizon is
far brighter. The one is indeed blue, and the other white,
but the white is darkest* and by a great deal. And you
will, though perhaps not for the first time in your life,
perceive that though black is not easily proved to be white,
white may, under certain circumstances, be very nearly
proved black, or at all events brown.
§ 3. When this fact is first shown to them, the general
feeling with most people is, that, by being brought against
the sky, the white paper is somehow or other brought "into
shade." But this is not so ; the paper remains exactly as it
was ; it is only compared with an actually brighter hue,
and looks darker by comparison. The circumstances are
precisely like those which affect our sensations of heat and
cold. If, when by chance we have one hand warm, and
another cold, we feel, with each hand, water warmed to
an intermediate decree, we shall first declare the water to
be cold, and then to be warm ; but the water has a definite
heat wholly independent of our sensations, and accurately
ascertainable by a thermometer. So it is with light and
shade. Looking from the bright sky to the white paper,
we affirm the white paper to be " in shade," — that is, it
produces on us a sensation of darkness, by comparison.
But the hue of the paper, and that of the sky, are just as
fixed as temperatures are; and the sky is actually a
brighter thing than white paper, by a certain number of
degrees of light, scientifically determinable. In the same
* For which reason, I said in the Appendix to the third volume,
that the expression " finite realization of infinity " was a considerably
less rational one than " black realization of white."
OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT.
123
way, every other colour, or force of colour, is a fixed thing;,
not dependent on sensation, but numerically representable
with as much exactitude as a degree of heat by a thermom-
eter. And of these hues, that of open sky is one not pro-
ducible by human art. The sky is not blue colour merely,
— it is blue fire, and cannot be painted.
§ 4. Next, observe, this blue fire has in it white fire ;
that is, it has white clouds, as much brighter than itself as
it is brighter than the white paper. So, then, above this
azure light, we have another equally exalted step of white
light. Supposing the value of the light of the pure white
paper represented by the number 10, then that of the blue
sky will be (approximately) about 20, and of the white
clouds 30.
But look at the white clouds carefully, and it will be
seen they are not all of the same white ; parts of them are
quite grey compared with other parts, and they are as full
of passages of light and shade as if they were of solid
earth. Nevertheless, their most deeply shaded part is
that already so much lighter than the blue sky, which has
brought us up to our number 30, and all these high lights
of white are some 10 degrees above that, or, to white
paper, as 40 to 10. And now if you look from the blue sky
and white clouds towards the sun, you will find that this
cloud white, which is four times as white as white paper,
is quite dark and lightless compared with those silver
clouds that burn nearer the sun itself, which you cannot
gaze upon, — an infinite of brightness. How will you
estimate that ?
And yet to express all this, we have but our poor white
paper after all. We must not talk too proudly of our
" truths " of art ; I am afraid we shall have to let a good
deal of black fallacy into it, at the best.
§ 5. Well, of the sun, and of the silver clouds, we will
not talk for the present. But this principal fact we have
124
OF TURNERIAN LIGHT.
learned by our experiment with the white paper, that, taken
all in all, the calm sky, with such light and shade as are
in it, is brighter than the earth ; brighter them the whitest
thing on eai'th which has not, at the moment of compari-
son, heaven's own direct light on it. "Which fact it is gene-
rally one of the first objects of noble painters to render.
I have already marked one part of their aim in doing so,
namely, the expression of infinity ; but the opposing of
heavenly light to earth-darkness is another most important
one ; and of all ways of rendering a picture generally im-
pressive, this is the simplest and surest. Make the sky
calm and luminous, and raise against it dark trees, moun-
tains, or towers, or any other substantial or terrestrial
thing, in bold outline, and the mind accepts the assertion
of this great and solemn truth with thankfulness.
§ 6. But this may be done either nobly or basely, as
any other solemn truth may be asserted. It may be
spoken with true feeling of all that it means ; or it may
be declared, as a Turk declares that " God is great," when
he means only that he himself is lazy. The " heaven is
bright," of many vulgar painters, has precisely the same
amount of signification ; it means that they know
nothing — will do nothing — are without thought — with-
out care — without passion. They will not walk the earth,
nor watch the ways of it, nor gather the flowers of
it. They will sit in the shade, and only assert that
very perceptible, long-ascertained fact, " heaven is
bright." And as it may be asserted basely, so it may be
accepted basely. Many of our capacities for receiving
noblest emotion are abused in mere idleness, for pleasure's
sake, and people take the excitement of a solemn sensa-
tion as they do that of a strong drink. Thus the aban-
doned court of Louis XIV. had on fast days its sacred
concerts, doubtless entering in some degree into the reli-
gious expression of the music, and thus idle and frivolous
OF TUENERIAN LIGHT.
125
women at the present day will weep at an oratorio. So
the snblimest effects of landscape may be sought through
mere indolence; and even those who are not ignorant, or
dull, judge often erroneously of such effects of art, be-
cause their very openness to all pleasant and sacred associa-
tion instantly colours whatever they see, so that, give them
but the feeblest shadow of a thing they love, they are in-
stantly touched by it to the heart, and mistake their own
pleasurable feeling for the result of the painter's power.
Thus when, by spotting and splashing, such a painter as
Constable reminds them somewhat of wet grass and green
leaves, forthwith they fancy themselves in all the happi-
ness of a meadow walk ; and when G-aspar Poussin throws
out his yellow horizon with black hills, forthwith they are
touched as by the solemnity of a real Italian twilight, al-
together forgetting that wet grass and twilight do not con-
stitute the universe ; and prevented by their joy at being
pleasantly cool, or gravely warm, from seeking any of those
more precious truths which cannot be caught by momen-
tary sensation, but must be thoughtfully pursued.
§ 7. I say " more precious," for the simple fact that the
sky is brighter than the earth is not a precious truth un-
less the earth itself be first understood. Despise the earth,
or slander it ; fix your eyes on its gloom, and forget its
loveliness ; and we do not thank you for your languid or
despairing perception of brightness in heaven. But rise
np actively on the earth, — learn what there is in it, know
its colour and form, and the full measure and make of it,
and if after that you can say " heaven is bright," it will be
a precious truth, but not till then. Giovanni Bellini
knows the earth well, paints it to the full, and to the
smallest fig-leaf and falling flower, — blue hill and white-
walled city, — glittering- robe and golden hair; to each he
will give its lustre and loveliness ; and then, so far as with
his poor human lips he may declare it, far beyond all
126
OF TURNERIAN LIGHT.
these, he proclaims that " heaven is bright." But Gaspar,
and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery
ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one
blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness ;
when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart,
they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had
long ago discerned for them, — the sky's brightness, — we
do not thank them ; or thank them only in so far as, even
in uttering this last remnant of truth, they are more com-
mendable than those who have sunk from apathy to athe-
ism, and declare, in their dark and hopeless backgrounds,
that heaven is not bright.
§ 8. Let us next ascertain what are the colours of the
earth itself.
A mountain five or six miles off, in a sunny summer
morning in Switzerland, will commonly present itself in
some such pitch of dark force, as related to the sky, as
that shown in Fig. 4. Plate 25, while the sky itself wull
still, if there are white clouds in it, tell as a clear dark,
throwing out those white clouds in vigorous relief of light;
yet, conduct the experiment of the white paper as already
described, and you will, in all probability, find that the
darkest part of the mountain — its most vigorous nook of
almost black-looking shadow — is whiter than the paper.
The figure given represents the apparent colour * of
the top of the Aiguille Bouchard (the mountain wdiich is
seen from the village of Chamouni, on the other side of
the Glacier des Bois), distant, by Forbes's map, a furlong
or two less than four miles in a direct line from the point
of observation. The observation was made on a warm
sunny morning, about eleven o'clock, the sky clear blue ;
, the mountain seen against it, its shadows grey purple, and
* The colour, but not the form. I wanted the contour of the top of
the Br even for reference in another place, and have therefore given it
instead of that of the Bouchard, but in the proper depth of tint.
OF TUJRNERIAN LIGHT.
127
its sunlit parts greenish. Then the darkest part of the
mountain was lighter than pure white paper, held upright
in full light at the window,. parallel to the direction in
which the light entered. And it will thus generally he
found impossible to represent, in any of its true colours,
scenery distant more than two or three miles, in full day-
light. The deepest shadows are whiter than white paper.
§ 9. As, however, we pass to nearer objects, true repre-
sentation gradually becomes possible ; — to what degree is
always of course ascertainable accurately by the same
mode of experiment. Bring the edge of the paper against
the thing to be drawn, and on that edge — as precisely as
a lady would match the colours of two pieces of a dress —
.match the colour of the landscape (with a little opacpie
white mixed in the tints you use, so as to render it easy
to lighten or darken them). Take care not to imitate
the tint as you believe it to be, but accurately as it is;
so that the coloured edge of the paper shall not be dis-
cernible from the colour of the landscape. You will
then find (if before inexperienced) that shadows of trees,
which you thought were dark green or black, are pale
violets and purples ; that lights, which you thought were
green, are intensely yellow, brown, or golden, and most of
them far too bright to be matched at all. AYhen you have
got all the irnitable hues truly matched, sketch the masses
of the landscape out completely in those true and ascer-
tained colours ; and you will find, to your amazement, that
you have painted it in the colours of Turner, — in those
very colours which perhaps you have been laughing at all
your life, — the fact being that he, and he alone, of all
men, ever pai?ited Nature in her own colours.
§ 10. " Well, but," you will answer, impatiently, " how
is it, if they are the true colours, that they look so un-
natural?"
Because they are not shown in true contrast to the sky,
128
OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT.
and to other high lights. Nature paints her shadows in
j)ale purple, and then raises her lights of heaven and
sunshine to such height that the pale purple becomes, by
comparison, a vigorous dark* But poor Turner has no
sun at his command to oppose his pale colours. He fol-
lows Nature submissively as far as he can; puts pale
purple where she does, bright gold where she does ; and
then when, on the summit of the slope of light, she opens
her wings and quits the earth altogether, burning into in-
effable sunshine, what can he do but sit helpless, stretching
his hands towards her in calm consent, as she leaves him
and mocks at him !
§ 11. " Well," but you will farther ask, " is this right
or wise? ought not the contrast between the masses be
given, rather than the actual hues of a few parts of them,
when the others are inimitable ? "
Yes, if this were possible, it ought to be done ; but the
true contrasts can never be given. The whole question
is simply whether you will be false at one side of the scale
or at the other, — that is, whether you will lose yourself in
light or in darkness. This necessity is easily expressible
in numbers. Suppose the utmost light you wish to imi-
tate is that of serene, feebly lighted, clouds in ordinary
sky (not sun or stars, which it is, of course, impossible de-
ceptively to imitate in painting by any artifice). Then,
suppose the degrees of shadow between those clouds and
Nature's utmost darkness accurately measured, and divided
into a hundred degrees (darkness being zero). Next we
measure our own scale, calling our utmost possible black,
zero ; f and we shall be able to keep parallel with Nature,
perhaps up to as far as her 10 degrees ; all above that
being whiter than our white paper. Well, with our power
* Scarlet Shadows, 5 M. T., 333.
f Even here we shall be defeated by Nature, her utmost darkness
being deeper than ours.
OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT.
129
of contrast between zero and 40, we have to imitate her
contrasts between zero and 100. Now, if we want true
contrasts, we can first set our 40 to represent her 100, our
20 for her 80, and our zero for her 60 ; everything below
her 60 being lost in blackness. This is with certain modi-
fications, Rembrandt's system. Or, secondly, we can put
zero for her zero, 20 for her 20, and 40 for her 40 ; every-
thing above 40 being lost in whiteness,. This is, with cer-
tain modifications, Paul Veronese's system. Or, finally,
we can. put our zero for her zero, and our 40 for her 100 ;
our 20 for her 50, our 30 for her 75, and our ten for her
25, proportioning the intermediate contrasts accordingly.
This is, with certain modifications, Turner's system ; * the
modifications, in each case, being the adoption, to a cer-
tain extent, of either of the other systems. Thus, Turner
inclines to Paul Veronese ; liking, as far as possible, to
get his hues perfectly true up to a certain point, — that is
to say, to let his zero stand for Nature's zero, and his 10
for her 10, and his 20 for her 20, and then to expand
towards the light by quick but cunning steps, putting 27
for 50, 30 for 70, and reserving some force still for the
last 90 to 100. So Pembrandt modifies his system on the
other side, putting his 40 for 100, his 30 for 90, his 20 for
80; then going subtly downwards, 10 for 50, 5 for 30;
nearly everything between 30 and zero being lost in gloom,
yet so as still to reserve his zero for zero. The systems
expressed in tabular form will stand thus : —
Nature. Rembrandt. Turner. Veronese.
0 0 0 0
10 1 10 10
20 3 20 20
* When the clouds are brilliantly lighted, it may rather be, as stated
above, in the proportion of 100 to 40. I take the number 100 as more
calculable.
6*
130
OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT.
30
5
24
30
40
7
26
32
50
10
27
34
60
13
28
36
70
17
30
37
80
20
32
38
90
30
36
39
100
40
40
40
§ 12. Now it is evident that in Rembrandt's system, while
the contrasts are not more right than with Veronese, the
colours are all wrong, from beginning to end. With Tur-
ner and Veronese, Nature's 10 is their 10, and Nature's
20 their 20 ; enabling them to give pure truth up to a
certain point. But with Rembrandt not one colour is ab-
solutely true, from one side of the scale to the other ; only
the contrasts are true at the top of the scale. Of course,
this supposes Rembrandt's system applied to a subject
which shall try it to the utmost, such as landscape. Rem-
brandt generally chose subjects in which the real coluors
were very nearly imitable, — as single heads with dark
backgrounds, in which Nature's highest light was little
above his own ; her 40 being then truly representable by
his 40, his picture became nearly an absolute truth. But
his system is only right when applied to such subjects :
clearly, when we have the full scale of natural light to
deal with, Turner's and Veronese's convey the greatest
sum of truth. But not the most complete deception, for
people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed
by force of light than truth of colour, that they instantly
miss the relative power of the sky, and the upper tones ;
and all the true local colouring looks strange to them,
separated from its adjuncts of high light ; whereas, give
them the true contrast of light, and they will not ob-
serve the false local colour. Thus all Gaspar Poussin's
OF TURNERIAN LIGHT.
131
and Salvator's pictures, and all effects obtained by leaving
liigli lights in the midst of exaggerated darkness, catch
the eye, and are received for true, while the pure truth of
Veronese and Turner is rejected as unnatural ; only not
so much in Veronese's case as in Turner's, because Vero-
nese confines himself to more imitable things, as draperies,
figures, and architecture, in which his exquisite truth, at
the bottom of the scale tells on the eye at once ; but Tur-
ner works a good deal also (see the table) at the top of the
natural scale, dealing with effects of sunlight and other
phases of the upper colours, more or less inimitable, and
betraying therefore, more or less, the artifices used to ex-
press them. It will be observed, also, that in order to
reserve some force for the top of iris scale, Turner is
obliged to miss his gradations chiefly in middle tints (see
the table), where the feebleness is sure to be felt. His
principal point for missing the midmost gradations is al-
most always between the earth and sky ; he draws the
earth truly as far as he can, to the horizon ; then the sky
as far as he can, with his 30 to 40 part of the scale. They
run together at the horizon ; and the spectator complains
that there is no distinction between earth and sky, or that
the earth does not look solid enough.
§ 13. In the upper portions of the three j)illars 5, 6, 7,
Plate 25, are typically represented these three conditions
of light and shade, characteristic, 5, of Rembrandt, 6, of
Turner, and 7, of Veronese. The pillar to be drawn is
supposed, in all the three cases, white ; Rembrandt repre-
sents it as white on its highest light; and, getting the true
gradations between this highest light and extreme dark, is
reduced to his zero, or black, for the dark side of the white
object. This first pillar also represents the system of Leo-
nardo da Vinci. In the room of the Louvre appropriated
to Italian drawings is a study of a piece of drapery by
Leonardo. Its lights are touched with the finest white
132
OF TUENERIAN LIGHT.
chalk, and its shadows wrought, through exquisite grada-
tions, to utter blackness. The pillar 6 is drawn on the
system of Turner; the high point of light is still distinct:
but even the darkest part of the shaft is kept pale, and the
gradations which give the roundness are wrought out with
the utmost possible delicacy. The third shaft is drawn on
Veronese's system. The light, though still focused, is
more diffused than with Turner ; and a slight flatness re-
sults from the determination that the fact of the shaft's
being lohite shall be discerned more clearly even than
that it is round ; and that its darkest part shall still be
capable of brilliant relief, as a white mass, from other ob-
jects round it.
§ 14. This resolution, on Veronese's part, is owing to the
profound respect for the colours of objects which neces-
sarily influenced him, as the colourist at once the most
brilliant and the most tender of all painters of the elder
schools ; and it is necessary for us briefly to note the way
in which this greater or less respect for local colour influ-
ences the system of the three painters in light and shade.
Take the whitest piece of note-paper you can find, put
a blot of ink upon it, carry it into the sunshine, and hold
it fully fronting the sunshine, so as to make the paper look
as dazzling as possible, but not to let the wet blot of ink
shine. You will then find the ink look intensely black, — •
blacker, in fact, than anywhere else, owing to its vigorous
contrast with the dazzling paper.
Remove the paper from the sunshine. The ink will not
look so black. Carry the paper gradually into the darkest
part of the room, and the contrast will as gradually ap-
pear to diminish ; and, of course, in darkness, the distinc-
tion between the black and the white vanishes. Wet ink
is as perfect a representative as is by any means attainable
of a perfectly dark colour ; that is, of one which absorbs
all the light that falls on it; and the nature of such
OF TUKNKKIAN LIGHT.
133
a colour is best understood by considering it as a piece of
portable night. Now, of course, the higher you raise the
daylight about this bit of night, the more vigorous is the
contrast between the two. And, therefore, as a general
rule, the higher you raise the light on any object with a
pattern or stain upon it, the more distinctly that pattern
or stain is seen.
But observe : the distinction between the full black of
ink, and full white of paper, is the utmost reach of
light and dark possible to art. Therefore, if this contrast
is to be represented truly, no deeper black can ever be
given in any shadow than that offered at once, as local
colour, in a full black pattern, on the highest light. And,
where colour is the principal object of the picture, that
colour must, at all events, be as right as possible where it
is best seen, i.e. in the lights. Hence the principle of Paul
Veronese, and of all the great Venetian colourists, is to
use full black for full black in high light, letting the
shadow shift for itself as best it may ; and sometimes
even putting the local black a little darker in light than
shadow, in order to give the more vigorous contrast noted
above. Let the pillars in Plate 25 be supposed to have a
black mosaic pattern on the lower part of their shafts.
Paul Veronese's general practice will be, as at 7, having
marked the rounding of the shaft as well as he can in the
white parts, to paint the pattern with one even black over
all, reinforcing it, if at all, a little in the light.
§ 15. Repeat the experiment on the note-paper with a
red spot of carmine instead of ink. You will now find
that the contrast in the sunshine appears about the same
as in the shade — the red and white rising and falling
together, and dying away together into the darkness.
The fact, however, is, that the contrast does actually for
some time increase towards the light; for in utter dark-
ness the distinction is not visible — the red cannot be dis-
134
OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT.
tinguished from the white ; admit a little light, and the
contrast is feebly discernible ; admit more, it is distinctly
discernible. But you cannot increase the contrast beyond
a certain point. From that point the red and white for
some time rise very nearly equally in light, or fall
together very nearly equally in shade ; but the contrast
will begin to diminish in very high lights, for strong sun-
light has a tendency to exhibit particles of dust, or any
sparkling texture in the local colour, and then to diminish
its power ; so that in order to see local colour well, a cer-
tain degree of shadow is necessary : for instance, a very
delicate complexion is not well seen in the sun ; and the
veins of a marble pillar, or the colours of a picture, can
only be properly seen in comparative shade.
§ 16. I will not entangle the reader in the very subtle
and curious variations of the laws in this matter. The
simple fact which is necessary for him to observe is,
that the paler and purer the colour, the more the great
Yenetian colourists will reinforce it in the shadow, and
allow it to fall or rise in sympathy with the light ; and
those especially whose object it is to represent sunshine,
nearly always reinforce their local colours somewhat in the
shadows, and keep them both fainter and feebler in the
light, so that they thus approach a condition of universal
glow, the full colour being used for the shadow, and a del-
icate and somewhat subdued hue of it for the light. And
this to the eye is the loveliest possible condition of colour.
Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they
admire a rose so much more than all other flowers. If
they consider, they will find, first, that red is, in a deli-
cately gradated state, the loveliest of all pure colours ; and
secondly, that in the rose there is no shadow, except what
is composed of colour. All its shadows are fuller in colour
than its lights, owing to the translucency and reflective
power of its leaves.
OF TUlvNERIAN LIGHT.
135
The second shaft, 6, in which the local colour is paler
towards the tight, and reinforced in the shadow, will
therefore represent the Venetian system with respect to
paler colours, and the system, for the most part, even with
respect to darker colours, of painters who attempt to render
effects of strong sunlight. Generally, therefore, it repre-
sents the practice of Turner. The first shaft, 5, exhibits
the disadvantage of the practice of Rembrandt and
Leonardo, in that they cannot show the local colour on the
dark side, since, however energetic, it must at last sink
into their exaggerated darkness.
' § 17. JSTow, from all the preceding inquiry, the reader
must perceive more and more distinctly the great truth,
that all forms of right art consist in a certain choice made
between various classes of truths, a few only being repre-
sented, and others necessarily excluded ; and that the ex-
cellence of each style depends first on its consistency with
itself, — the perfect fidelity ', as far as possible, to the truths
it has chosen • and secondly, on the breadth of its harmo-
ny, or number of truths it has been able to reconcile, and
the consciousness with which the truths refused are
acknowledged, even though they may not be represented.
A great artist is j ust like a wise and hospitable man with a
small house : the large companies of truths, like guests, are
waiting his invitation ; he wisely chooses from among this
crowd the guests who will be happiest with each other, mak-
ing those whom he receives thoroughly comfortable, and
kindly remembering even those whom he excludes ; while
the foolish host, trying to receive all, leaves a large part of
his company on the staircase, without even knowing who
is there, and destroys, by inconsistent fellowship, the
pleasure of those who gain entrance.
§ 18. But even those hosts who choose well will be
farther distinguished from each other by their choice of
nobler or inferior companies ; and we find the greatest
136
OF TUENEKIAN LIGHT.
artists mainly divided into two groups, — those who paint
principally with respect to local colour,, headed by Paul
Veronese, Titian, and Turner ; and those who paint prin-
cipally with reference to light and shade irrespective of
colour, headed by Leonardo da Yinci, Rembrandt, and Ra-
phael. The noblest members of each of these classes intro-
duce the element proper to the other class, in a subordinate
way. Paul Veronese introduces a subordinate light and
shade, and Leonardo introduces a subordinate local colour.
The main difference is, that with Leonardo, Rembrandt, and
Raphael, vast masses of the picture are lost in compara-
tively colourless (dark, grey, or brown) shadow; these
painters beginning with the lights, and going down to
blackness; but with Veronese, Titian, and Turner, the
whole picture is like the rose, — glowing with colour in the
shadows, and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or
masses of whiteness, in the lights, they having begun with
the shadows, and gone up to whiteness.
§ 19. The colourists have in this respect one dis-
advantage, and three advantages. The disadvantage is,
that between their less violent hues, it is not possible to
draw all the forms which can be represented by the
exaggerated shadow of the chiaroscurists, and therefore a
slight tendency to flatness is always characteristic of the
greater colourists, as opposed to Leonardo or Rembrandt.
When the form of some single object is to be given, and
its subtleties are to be rendered to the utmost, the Leonard-
esque manner of drawing is often very noble. It is
generally adopted by Albert Durer in his engravings, and
is very useful, when employed by a thorough master, in
many kinds of engraving ; * but it is an utterly false
method of study, as we shall see presently.
* It is often extremely difficult to distinguish properly between the
Leonardesque manner, in which local colour is denied altogether, and
the Turneresque, in which local colour at its highest point in the picture
OF TURNERIAN LIGHT.
137
§ 20. Of the three advantages possessed by the colourists
over the cliiaroscurists, the first is, that they have in the
greater portions of their pictures absolute truth, as shown
above, § 12, while the cliiaroscurists have no absolute truth
anywhere. With the colourists the shadows are right; the
U '(j i hi )s untrue: but with the cJiiaruscu/'ists lights and
shadows are both untrue The second advantage is, that
also the relations of colour are broader and vaster with the
colourists than the cliiaroscurists. Take, for example, that
piece of drapery studied by Leonardo, in the Louvre, with
white lights and black shadows. Ask yourself, first,
whether the real drapery was black or white. If white,
then its high lights are rightly white ; but its folds being
black, it could not as a mass be distinguished from the
black or dark objects in its neighborhood. But the fact
is, that a white cloth or handkerchief always is distin-
guished in daylight, as a ivhole white thing, from all that
is coloured about it : we see at once that there is a white
piece of stuff, and a red, or green, or grey one near it, as
the case may be: and this relation of the white object to
other objects not white, Leonardo has wholly deprived
himself of the power of expressing ; while, if the cloth
were black or dark, much more has he erred by making
its lio'hts white. In either case, he has missed the large
relation of mass to mass, for the sake of the small one of
is merged in whiteness. Thus, Albert Durer's noble '"Melancholia" is
entirely Leonardesque ; the leaves on her head, her flesh, her wings,
her dress, the wolf, the wooden ball, and the rainbow, being all equally
white on the high lights. But my drawing of leaves, facing page 125,
Vol. III. , is Turneresque ; because, though I leave pure white to re-
present the pale green of leaves and grass in high light, I give definite
increase of darkness to four of the bramble leaves, which, in reality,
were purple, and leave a dark withered stalk nearly black, though it is
in light, where it crosses the leaf in the centre. These distinctions
could only be properly explained by a lengthy series of examples ; which
I hope to give some day or other, but have not space for here.
138
OF TUKNEEIAN LIGHT.
fold to fold. And this is more or less the case with all
. chiaroscurists ; with all painters, that is to say, who en-
deavour in their studies of objects to get rid of the idea of
colour, and give the abstract shade. They invariably
exaggerate the shadows, not with respect to the thing
itself, but with respect to all around it ; and they ex-
aggerate the lights also, by leaving pure white for the
high light of what in reality is grey, rose-coloured, or, in
some way, not white.
§ 21. This method of study, being peculiarly character-
istic of the Roman and Florentine schools, and associated
with very accurate knowledge of form and expression, has
gradually got to be thought by a large body of artists the
grand way of study ; an idea which has been fostered all
the more because it was an unnatural way, and therefore
thought to be a philosophical one. Almost the first idea
of a child, or of a simple person looking at anything, is,
that it is a red, or a black, or a green, or a white thing.
Nay, say the artists ; that is an unphilosophical and bar-
barous view of the matter. Red and white are mere
vulgar appearances ; look farther into the matter, and you
will see such and such wonderful other appearances.
Abstract those, they are the heroic, ejfic, historic, and
generally eligible appearances. And acting on this grand
principle, they draw flesh white, leaves white, ground
white, everything white in the light, and everything black
in the shade — and think themselves wise. But, the longer
I live, the more ground I see to hold in high honour a
certain sort of childishness or innocent susceptibility.
Generally speaking, I find that when we first look at a
subject, we get a glimpse of some of the greatest truths
about it: as we look longer, our vanity, and false reasoning,
and half-knowledge, lead us into various wrong opinions ;
but as we look longer still, we gradually return to our first
impressions, only with a full understanding of their
OF TtJKNEBIAN LIGHT.
139
mystical and innermost reasons ; and of much beyond and
beside them, not then known to us, now added (partly as a
foundation, partly as a corollary) to what at first we felt or
saw. It is thus eminently in this matter of colour. Lay
your hand over the page of this book, — any child or simple
person looking at the hand and book, would perceive, as
the main fact of the matter, that a brownish pink thing-
was laid over a white one. The grand artist comes and
tells you that your hand is not pink, and your paper is not
white. He shades your fingers and shades your book, and
makes you see all manner of starting veins, and projecting
muscles, and black hollows, where before you saw nothing
but paper and fingers. But go a little farther, and you
will get more innocent again ; you will find that, when
"science has done its worst, two and two still make four;"
and that the main and most important facts about your
hand, so seen, are, after all, that it has four fingers and a
thumb — showing as brownish pink things on white paper.
§ 22. I have also been more and more convinced, the
more I think of it, that in general pride is at the bottom
of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occa-
sional good, but whenever pride puts in its word, every-
thing goes wrong, and what it might really be desirable
to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to
do, proudly. Thus, while it is very often good for the
artist to make studies of things, for the sake of knowing
their forms, with their high lights all white, the moment
he does this in a haughty way, and thinks himself drawing
in the great style, because he leaves high lights white, it is
all over with him; and half the degradation of art in
modern times has been owing to endeavours, much fostered
by the metaphysical Germans, to see things without colour,
as if colour were a vulgar thing, the result being, in most
students, that they end by not being able to see anything
at all ; whereas the true and perfect way of studying any
140
OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT.
object is simply to look what its colour is in high light, and
put that safely down, if possible ; or, if you are making a
chiaroscuro study, to take the grey answering to that colour,
and cover the whole object at once with that grey, firmly
resolving that no part of it shall be brighter than that;
then look for the darkest part of it, and if, as is probable,
its darkest part be still a great deal lighter than black, or
than other things about it, assume a given shade, as dark
as, with due reference to other things, you can have it,
but no darker. Mark that for your extreme dark on the
object, and between those limits get as much drawing as
you can, by subtlety of gradation. That will tax your
powers of drawing indeed ; and you will find this, which
seems a childish and simple way of going to work, requires
verily a thousandfold more power to carry out than all the
pseudo-scientific abstractions that ever were invented.
§ 23. Nor can it long be doubted that it is also the
most -impressive way to others ; for the third great advan-
tage possessed by the coloitrists is, that the delightfulness
of their picture, its sacredness, and general nobleness, are
increased exactly in proportion to the quantity of light
and of lovely colour they can introduce in the shadows* as
opposed to the black and grey of the chiaroscurists. I have
already insisted upon the fact of the sacredness of colour,
and its necessary connection with all pure and noble feel-
ing. What we have seen of the use of colour by the poets
will help to confirm this truth ; but perhaps I have not yet
enough insisted on the simplest and readiest to hand of
all proofs, — the way, namely, in which Grod has employed
colour in His creation as the unvarying accompaniment of
all that is purest, most innocent, and most precious ; while
for things precious only in material uses, or dangerous,
* Shadows are colourless, except from reflected light. —5 M. P., 333,
note.
OF TURNERIAN LIGHT.
141
common colours are reserved. Consider for a little while
what sort of a world it would be if all flowers were grey,
all leaves black, and the sky brown. Imagine that, as
completely as may be, and consider whether you would
think the world any whit more sacred for being thus trans-
figured into the hues of the shadows in Raphael's Trans-
figuration. Then observe how constantly innocent things
are bright in colour ; look at a dove's neck, and compare
it with the grey back of a viper ; I have often heard
talk of brilliantly coloured serpents ; and I suppose there
are such, — as there are gay poisons, like the foxglove and
kalmia — types of deceit ; but all the venomous serpents I
have really seen are grey, brick-red, or brown, variously mot-
tled ; and the most awful serpent I have seen, the Egyptian
asp, is precisely of the colour of gravel, or only a little
greyer. So, again, the crocodile and alligator are grey,
but the innocent lizard green and beautiful. I do not
mean that the rule is invariable, otherwise it would be more
convincing than the lessons of the natural universe are in-
tended ever to be ; there are beautiful colours on the leo-
pard and tiger, and in the berries of the nightshade ; and
there is nothing very notable in brilliancy of colour either
in sheep or cattle (though, by the way, the velvet of a
brown bull's hide in the sun, or the tawny white of the
Italian oxen, is, to my mind, lovelier than any leopard's or
tiger's skin) : but take a wider view of nature, and com-
pare generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets, butterflies,
birds, gold-fish, rubies, opals, and corals, with alligators,
hippopotami, lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, slugs,
bones, fungi,* fogs, and corrupting, stinging, destroying
things in general, and you will feel then how the question
* It is notable, however, that nearly all the poisonous agarics are
scarlet or speckled, and wholesome ones brown or grey, as if to show
us that things rising out of darkness and decay are always most deadly
when they are well drest.
142
OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT.
stands between the colpurists and chiaroscurists, — which of
them have nature and life on their side, and which have
sin and death.
§ 24. Finally : the ascertainment of the sanctity of
colour is not left to human sagacity. It is distinctly
stated in Scripture. I have before alluded to the sacred
chord of colour (blue, purple, and scarlet, with white and
gold) as appointed in the Tabernacle ; this chord is the
fixed base of all colouring with the workmen of every great
age ; the purple and scarlet will be found constantly em-
ployed by noble painters, in various unison, to the exclusion
in general of pure crimson ; — it is the harmony described
by Herodotus as used in the battlements of Ecbatana,
and the invariable base of all beautiful missal-painting ;
the mistake continually made b}^ modern restorers, in sup-
posing the purple to be a faded crimson, and substituting
full crimson for it, being instantly fatal to the whole work,
as, indeed, the slightest modification of any hue in a per-
fect colour-harmony must always be.* In this chord the
scarlet is the powerful colour, and is on the whole the
most perfect representation of abstract colour which
exists ; blue being in a certain degree associated with
shade, yellow with light, and scarlet, as absolute colour,
standing alone. Accordingly, we find it used, together
with cedar wood, hyssop, and running water, as an emblem
of purification, in Leviticus xiv. 4, and other places, and
so used not merely as the representative of the colour of
blood, since it was also to be dipped in the actual blood of
a living bird. So that the cedar wood for its perfume, the
hyssop for its searchingness, the water for its cleansing,
and the scarlet for its kindling or enlightening, are all
* Hence the intense absurdity of endeavouring to "restore " the colour
of ancient buildings by the hands of ignorant colourists, as at the
Crystal Palace.
OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT.
143
used as tokens of sanctification ; * and it cannot l>e with
any force alleged, in opposition to this definite appoint-
ment, that scarlet is used incidentally to illustrate the stain
of sin, — " though thy sins be as scarlet," — any more than
it could be received as a diminution of the authority for
using snow- whiteness as a type of purity, that Gehazi's
leprosy is described as being as "white as snow." An in-
cidental image has no authoritative meaning, but a stated
ceremonial appointment has ; besides, we have the reversed
image given distinctly in Prov. xxxi.: "She is not afraid
of the snow for her household, for all her household are
clothed with scarlet? And, again: "Ye daughters of
Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with
other delights." So, also, the arraying of the mystic
Babylon in purple and scarlet may be interpreted exactly
as we choose ; either, by those who think colour sensual,
as an image of earthly pomp and guilt, or, by those who
think it sacred, as an image of assumed or pretended sanc-
tity. It is possible the two meanings may be blended, and
the idea may be that the purple and fine linen of Dives
are worn in hypocritical semblance of the purple and fine
linen of the high priest, being, nevertheless, themselves,
in all cases typical of all beauty and purity. I hope, how-
ever, to be able some day to enter farther into these ques-
tions with respect to the art of illumination ; meantime,
the facts bearing on our immediate subject may be briefly
recapitulated. All men, completely organized and justly
tempered, enjoy colour; it is meant for the perpetual
comfort and delight of the human heart ; it is richly be-
stowed on the highest works of creation, and the eminent
sign and seal of perfection in them ; being associated with
life in the human body, with light in the sky, with purity
* The redeemed Rahab bound for a sign a scarlet thread in the win-
dow. Compare Canticles iv. 3.
144
OF TURNEKTAN LIGHT.
and hardness in the earth, — death, night, and pollution of
all kinds being colourless. And although if form and
colour be brought into complete opposition,* so that it
should be put to us as a matter of stern choice whether we
should have a work of art all of form, without colour (as
an Albert Durer's engraving), or all of colour, without
form (as an imitation of mother-of-pearl), form is beyond
all comparison the more precious of the two ; and in ex-
plaining the essence of objects, form is essential, and col-
our more or less accidental; yet if colour be introduced at
all, it is necessary that, whatever else may be wrong, that
should be right; just as, though the music of a song may
not be so essential to its influence as the meaning of the
words, yet if the music be given at all, it most be right, or
its discord will spoil the words ; and it would be better, of
the two, that the words should be indistinct, than the notes
false. Hence, as I have said elsewhere, the business of a
painter is to paint. If he can colour, he is a painter,
* The inconsistency between perfections of colour and form, which I
have had to insist npon in other places, is exactly like that between ar-
ticulation and harmony. We cannot have the richest harmony with the
sharpest and most audible articulation of words: yet good singers
will articulate clearly ; and the perfect study of the science of music
will conduct to a fine articulation ; but the study of pronunciation will
not conduct to, nor involve, that of harmony. So, also, though, as
said farther on, subtle expression can be got without colour, perfect
expression never can ; for the colour of the face is a part of its expres-
sion. How often has that scene between Francesca di Rimini and her
lover been vainly attempted by sculptors, simply because they did not
observe that the main note of expression in it was in the fair sheet-
lightning— fading and flaming through the cloud of passion !
Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
Quella lettura, e scolorocci il vise
And, of course, in landscape, colour is the principal source of expression.
Take one melancholy chord from the close of Crabbe's Patron:
" Cold grew the foggy mom ; the dajr was brief,
Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf.
OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT.
145
though he can do nothing else ; if he cannot colour, he is
no painter, though he may do everything else. But it is,
in fact, impossible, if he can colour, but that he should be
able to do more ; for a faithful study of colour will always
give power over form, though the most intense study of
form will give no power over colour. The man who can
see all the greys, and reds, and purples in a peach, will
paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether ; but
the man who has only studied its roundness, may not see
its purples and greys, and if he does not, will never get it
to look like a peach ; so that great power over colour is
always a sign of large general art-intellect. Expression
of the most subtle kind can be often reached by the slight
studies of caricaturists ; * sometimes elaborated by the toil
of the dull, and sometimes by the sentiment of the feeble ;
but to* colour well recpiires real talent and earnest study,
and to colour perfectly is the rarest and most precious
j^ower an artist can possess. Every other gift may be er-
roneously cultivated, but this will guide to all healthy,
natural, and forcible truth ; the student may be led into
folly by philosophers, and into falsehood by purists ; but
he is always safe if he holds the hand of a colourist.
4. M. P., Ch. iii.
The dew dwelt ever on the herb ; the woods
Roared with strong blasts ; with mighty showers, the floods :
All green was vanished, save of pine and yew
That still displayed their melancholy hue ;
Save the green holly, with its berries red, *
And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread."
* See Appendix I. Modern Grotesque. 4 M. P. , p. 32-52.
7
CHAPTEE VIII.
I. — COLOUR ITS IMPORTANCE.
1st. Abstract colour is of far less importance than ab-
stract form, that is to say, if it could rest in our choice
whether we would carve like Phidias (supposing Phidias
had never used colour), or arrange the colour of a
shawl like Indians, there is no question as to which power
we ought to choose. The difference of rank is vast;
there is no way of estimating or measuring it.
So, again, if it rest in our clioice whether we will be
great in invention of form, to be expressed only by light
and shade, as Durer, or great in invention and application
of colour, caring only for ungainly form, as Bassano, there
is still no question. Try to be Durer, of the two. So
again, if we have to give an account or description of any-
thing— if it be an object of high interest — its form will be
always what we should first tell. Neither leopard spots .
nor partridge's signify primarily in describing either beast
or bird. But teeth and feathers do.
2. Secondly. Though colour is of less importance than
form, if you introduce it at all, it must be right.
People often speak of the Poman school as if it were
greater than the Venetian, because its colour is '''sub-
ordinate."
Its colour is not subordinate. It is bad.
If you paint coloured objects, you must either paint them
rightly or wrongly. There is no other choice. You may
introduce as little colour as you choose — a mere tint of rose
in a chalk drawing, for instance ; or pale hues generally
— as Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. All such
IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR.
147
work implies feebleness or imperfection, but not neces-
sarily error. But if you paint with full colour, as Raphael
and Leonardo, you must either be true or false. If true,
you will paint like a Venetian. If false, your form, su-
premely beautiful, may draw the attention of the spectator
from the false colour, or induce him to pardon it — and, if
ill- taught, even to like it ; but your picture is none the
greater for that. Had Leonardo and Raphael coloured
like Giorgione, their work would have been greater, not
less, than it is now.
3. To colour perfectly is the rarest and most precious
(technical) power an artist can possess. There have been
only seven supreme colourists among the true painters
whose works exist (namely, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese,
Tintoret, Correggio, Reynolds, and Turner) ; but the names
of great designers, including sculptors, architects, and
metal-workers, are multitudinous. Also, if you can colour
perfectly, you are sure to be able to do everything else
if you like. There never yet was colourist who could not
draw ; but faculty of perceiving form may exist alone.
I believe, however, it will be found ultimately that the
perfect gifts of colour aud form always go together.
Titian's form is nobler than Durer's, and more subtle ; nor
have I any doubt but that Phidias could have painted as
nobly as he carved. But when the powers are not su-
preme, the wisest men usually neglect the colour-gift, and
clevelope that of form. (See post, 168.)
It may be noted that Turner's colour is founded more
on Correggio and Bassano than on the central Venetians ;
it involves a more tender and constant reference to light
and shade than that of Veronese ; and a more sparkling
and gem-like lustre than that of Titian. I dislike using
a technical word which has been disgraced by affectation,
but there is no other word to signify what I mean in say-
ing that Turner's colour has, to the full, Correggio's " mor-
148
turner's truth of colour.
bidezza," including also, in due place, conditions of mosaic
effect, like that of the colours in an Indian design, un-
accomplished by any previous master in painting ; and
a fantasy of inventive arrangement corresponding to that
of Beethoven in music. In its concurrence with and ex-
pression of texture or construction of surfaces (as their
bloom, lustre, or intricacy) it stands unrivalled — no still-
life painting by any other master can stand for an instant
beside Turner's, when his work is of life-size, as in his
numerous studies of birds and their plumage. This " mor-
bidezza'' of colour is associated, precisely as it was in
Correggio, with an exquisite sensibility to fineness and in-
tricacy of curvature : curvature being to lines what grada-
tion is to colours. This subject, also, is too difficult and
too little regarded by the public, to be entered upon here,
but it must be observed that this quality of Turner's de-
sign, the one which of all is best expressible by engraving,
has of all been least expressed, owing to the constant re-
duction or change of proportion in the plates.
4. Colour is the purifying or sanctifying element of
material beauty.
If so, how less important than form ? Because, on form
depends existence ; on colour, only purity. Under the
Levitical law, neither scarlet nor hyssop could purify the
deformed. So, under all natural law, there must be
rightly shaped members first ; then sanctifying colour and
fire in them.
Nevertheless, there are several great difficulties and
oppositions of aspect in this matter, which I must try to
reconcile now clearly and finally. As colour is the type
of Love, it resembles it in all its modes of operation ; and
in practical work of human hands, it sustains changes of
worthiness precisely like those of human sexual love. That
love, when true, faithful, well-fixed, is eminently the
sanctifying element of human life : without it, the soul
IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR.
149
cannot reach its fullest height of holiness. But if shallow,
faithless, misdirected, it is also one of the strongest cor-
rupting and degrading elements of life.
Between these base and lofty states of Love are the
loveless states ; some cold and horrible ; others chaste,
childish, or ascetic, bearing to careless thinkers the sem-
blance of purity higher than that of Love.
So it is with the type of Love — colour. Followed rash-
ly, coarsely, untruly, for the mere pleasure of it, with no
reverence, it becomes a temptation, and leads to cor-
ruption. Followed faithfully, wTith intense but rever-
ent passion, it is the holiest of all aspects of material
things.
Between these two modes of pursuing it, come two
modes of refusing it — one, dark and sensual ; the other,
statuesque and grave, having great aspect of nobleness.
Thus we have, first, the coarse love of colour, as a vul-
gar person's choice of gaudy hues in dress.
Then, again, we have the base disdain of colour, of
which I have spoken at length elsewhere. Thus we have
the lofty disdain of colour, as in Durer's and Raphael's
drawing: finally, the severest and passionate following of
it, in Giorgione and Titian.
5. Colour is, more than all elements of art, the reward
of veracity of purpose. This point respecting it I have
not noticed before, and it is highly curious. We have just
seen that in giving an account of. anything for its own
sake, the most important points are those of form. Never-
theless, the form of the object is its own attribute ; special,
not shared with other things. An error in giving an ac-
count of it does not necessarily involve wider error.
But its colour is partly its own, partly shared with other
things round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight
is involved in the colour it has cast upon this single thing;
to falsify that colour, is to misrepresent and break the
150
IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR.
harmony of the day ; also, by what colour it bears, this
single object is altering hues all round it : reflecting its
Own into them, displaying them by opposition, softening
them by repetition ; one falsehood in colour in one place
implies a thousand in the neighbourhood. Hence, there
are peculiar penalties attached to falsehood in colour, and
peculiar rewards granted to veracity in it. Form may be
attained in perfectness by painters who, in their course of
study, are continually altering or idealizing it ; but only
the sternest fidelity will reach colouring. Idealize or alter
in that, and you are lost. Whether you alter by abasing,
or exaggerating, — by glare or by decline, one fate is for
you — ruin. Violate truth wilfully in the slightest partic-
ular, or, at least, get into the habit of violating it, and all
kinds of failure and error will surround and haunt you
to your fall.
Therefore, also, as long as you are working with form
only, you may amuse yourself with fancies ; but colour is
sacred — in that you must keep to facts. Hence the ap-
parent anomaly that the only schools of colour are the
schools of Realism. The men who care for form only,
may drift about in dreams of Spiritualism ; but a colour-
ist must keep to substance. The greater his power in
colour enchantment, the more stern and constant will be
his common sense. Fuseli may wander wildly among
gray spectra, but Reynolds and Gainsborough must stay
in broad daylight, with pure humanity. Yelasquez, the
greatest colourist, is the most accurate portrait painter of
Spain ; Holbein, the most accurate portrait painter, is the
only colourist of Germany ; and even Tintoret had to sac-
rifice some of the highest qualities of his colour before he
could give way to the flights of wayward though mighty
imagination, in which his mind rises or declines from the
royal calm of Titian. 51. P. , 333 note.
COLOUR-SCIENCE.
151
n. COLOUR-SCIENCE.
A. — Colours classified:
1. The Primary colours are, red, yellow and blue.
2. The Secondary or complementary colours are,
green, purple and orange.
B. — Colours modified, as by
1. Scales : as scales of red, scales of yellow, etc.
2. Tones : which are scales modified in
a. Tints : any colour modified by white ;
b. Shades : any colour modified by black.
3. Hues : one colour modified by any other.
C. — Colours characterized :
1. Warm or advancing colour : red, yellow.
2. Cold or receding colour : blue, green, violet.
D. — Colours Harmonized :
1. Harmony of Analogy —
a. Of scale, produced by the simultaneous view
of different tones of the same scale, more or less approx-
imate.
b. Of hues, produced by the simultaneous view
of tones of the same or nearly of the same depth, belong-
ing to neighbouring scales.
c. Of a dominant coloured light, produced by the
simultaneous view of various colours assorted after the law
of contrast, but one of them predominating, as would
result from the view of these colours through a slightly
coloured glass.
2. Harmony of Contrast —
a. Of scale, produced by the simultaneous view
of two very distant tones of the same scale.
b. Of hues, produced by the simultaneous view
of tones of different depths, belonging to neighbouring
scales.
c. Of colours, produced by the simultaneous view
152
COLOUK-AET.
of colours belonging to very distant scales, assorted accord-
ing to the law of contrast. This contrast of scale may be
augmented by depth of adjacent tones.
d. Harmony of Simultaneous Contrast, being that
of different adjacent colours seen at the same time.
e. Harmony of Successive Contrasts — This delu-
sion takes place when but one colour is before the eye at
the same moment. When wearied of this colour, the eye
seeks to rest itself by seeing the secondary or comple-
mentary of the colour present ; as when the eye has wea-
ried of red, and turns from it, it sees not red but green,
the complementary of red, and so of the other colours.
f Harmony of Mixed Contrasts — This is an op-
tical effect of mixing upon the vision two colours seen suc-
cessively ; for instance, look with one eye for a time upon
red and then turn it upon blue, and the vision mixes the
red and blue and creates the impression of purple. In
simultaneous contrasts the effect is a modification of one
coloicr %i])on another when seen in the same act of vision.
In successive contrasts but one colour is present, and the
effect is in the eye and not in the colour. In mixed con-
trasts one or more colours are present and seen successively,
and the effect is also in the eye and not in the colour. Re-
member the difference. See also Harmony of Colours, as
mentioned in this chapter under " General Tone of Colour,"
clause 6.
III. COLOUR-AKT.
Colour- art may be considered under several heads —
1. Truth of colouring requires that colours should be
combined and arranged according to the laws of nature
as revealed by the prism and considered above.
2. Ideality 'of colouring • if colour is not idealized it is
mere paint, and cannot harmonize with the ideal charac
ter of an ideal picture ; in other words, colour must sym-
pathize with the subject and the sentiment.
COLOUR- ART.
153
3. Force of colouring is not obtrusive colouring, but
effective colouring ; as principal colour on the principal
figure ; bright or advancing colours for advanced objects ;
and receding colours for receding objects ; subdued colours
for less important objects. The distinct blue and red in
the draperies of the Roman and Florentine schools, though
destitute of the harmony produced by a variety of broken
and transparent colours, yet possess the effect of grandeur
required, and strike the eye with more force than if they
were harmonized by a greater number of tints. But only
great masters have succeeded in such force of colouring ;
in the hands of feebler powers it would be raw and harsh.
4. Balance of colour. In nature we find the same colours
dispersed everywhere. Take, for instance, a field of flow-
ers. No mass of colour is in a spot by itself ; but all are in-
termingled, which produces a balance of colour. If colour
is ^introduced but once in a picture, it appears like a spot
and unsupported on the canvas ; and, again, in the repe-
tition it must be slightly varied in form, tint, or hue ; as,
for instance, a rose in a bunch of flowers may be balanced
by a pink azalia, or one purple flow^er by another differ-
ing in form and hue. Perfect harmony of colouring re-
quires a careful observance of this law of nature in all
composition. If the subject requires a gay and brilliant
tone, the life and vivacity of contrast, the colours intro-
duced to secure that effect must be duly balanced by those
that are harmonious, else the eye will become sated. On
this point no definite rule can be given. If there is too
much contrast the picture will be spotty and harsh ; if too
little, where decided colours are introduced, it will be mo-
notonous. In the arrangement of colours much is gained
bv varying the forms of objects. In nature, according to
the prism, colours are balanced by three parts of yellow to
five of red and eight of blue; the sixteen parts making
white light. Also in the complementaries and primaries,
154
COLOUK-AKT.
five of red balance eleven of green ; three of yellow, thir^
teen of purple ; eight of blue, eight of orange ; and so of
all other combinations of colour.
5. Gradation of colour. Look for gradation spaces in
nature.
a. In Nature.
The sky is the largest and most beautiful ; watch
it at twilight after the sun is down, and try to consider
each pane of glass in the window you look through as
a piece of paper coloured blue, or grey, or purple, as it
happens to be, and observe how quietly and continuously
the gradation extends over the space in the window of one
or two feet square. It is amazing how slight the differences
of tint are by which, through infinite delicacy of grada-
tion, nature can express form. Compare the gradated
colours of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the
gradual concentration of the youthful blood in the cheek
with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply-drawn
veining of old age. Gradation is so inseparable a quality
of all natural shade and colour, that the eye refuses in art
to understand anything which appears without it, while on
the other hand nearly all the gradations in nature are so
subtle, and between degrees of tint so slightly separated,
that no human hand can in any wise equal or do anything
more than suggest the idea of them. In proportion to the
space over which gradation extends, and to its invisible
subtilty, is its grandeur, and in proportion to its narrow
limits and violent degrees, its vulgarity. In Correggio it
is morbid in spite of its refinement of execution, because
the eye is drawn to it, and it is made the most observable
and characteristic part of the picture ; whereas, natural
gradation is forever escaping observation to that degree
that the greater number of artists in working from nature
see it not. 2 M. P., 40, §§ 16, 17.
C0L0T7E-AET.
155
b. How can this gradation ~be effected f
Whenever you lay on a mass of colour, be sure that how-
ever large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated.
JVb colour exists in Nature under ordinary circumstances
without gradation. If you do not see this, it is the fault
of your inexperience : you will see it in due time, if you
practise enough. But in general you may see it at once.
In the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray must be
gradated by the roundness of the stem till it meets
the shaded side ; similarly the shaded side is gradated by
reflected light. Accordingly, whether by adding water, or
white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you will
do at pleasure, according to the texture you wish to pro-
duce), you must, in every tint you lay on, make it a little
paler at one part than another, and get an even gradation
between the two depths. This is very like laying down a
formal law or recipe for you ; but you will find it ia
merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed
physically impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of
colour, but it is so supremely improbable, that you had
better get into the habit of asking yourself invariably,
when you are going to copy a tint, — not "Is that gra-
dated?" but " Which way is it gradated?" and at least in
ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, you will be able
to answer decisively after a careful glance, though the
gradation may have been so subtle that you did not see it
at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of
colour may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's
head, if one part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a
bad touch ; for it is not merely because the natural fact is
so, that your colour should be gradated ; the preciousness
and pleasantness of the colour itself depends more on this
than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is to colours
just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beau-
156
COLOUR ART.
tifiil by the pure instinct of every human mind, and both,
considered as types, expressing the law of gradual change
and progress in the human soul itself. What the differ-
ence is in mere beauty between a gradated and ungradated
colour, may be seen easily by laying an even tint of rose-
colour on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The
victorious beauty of the rose as compared with other
flowers, depends wholly on the delicacy and quantity of
its colour gradations, all other flowers being either less
rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf ; or
less tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.
c. Colours change in gradation.
But observe, it is not enough in general that colour
should be gradated by being made merely paler or darker
at one place than another. Generally colour changes
as it diminishes, and is not merely darker at one spot,
but also purer at one spot than anywhere else. It
does not in the least follow that the darkest spot should
be the purest ; still less so that the lightest should be the
purest. Yery often the two gradations more or less
cross each other, one passing in one direction from pale-
ness to darkness, another in another direction from purity
to dulness, but there will almost always be both of them,
however reconciled ; and you must never be satisfied with
a piece of colour until you have got both : that is to say,
every piece of blue that you lay on must be quite blue
only at some given spot, nor that a large spot ; and must
be gradated from that into less pure blue — grayish blue, or
greenish blue, or purplish blue, over all the rest of the
space it occupies. And this you must do in one of three
ways : either, while the colour is wet, mix with it the
colour which is to subdue it, adding gradually a little more
and a little more ; or else, when the colour is quite dry,
strike a gradated touch of another colour over it, leaving
COLOUR-ART.
157
only a point of the first tint visible ; or else, lay the sub-
duing tints on in small touches, as in the exercise of tint-
ing the chess-board. Of each of these methods I have
something to tell you separately: but that is distinct from
the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without
once more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of
introducing it everywhere. I have profound dislike of
anything like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance,
I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get into a habit
of never touching paper with colour, without securing a
gradation. You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures,
perhaps six or seven feet long by four or five high,
find one spot of colour as large as a grain of wheat un-
gradated : and you will find in practice, that brilliancy of
hue, and vigour of light, and even the aspect of transpa-
rency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character
alone ; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more
from equality of colour than from nature of colour. Give
me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel
pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will paint
you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate my
mud, and subdue my dust : but though you had the red
of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light,
and amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous
picture, if you keep the masses of those colours unbroken
in purity, and unvarying in depth.
d. Three processes of gradation.
Next note the three processes by which gradation and
other characters are to be obtained :
A. Mixing while the colour is wet.
You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on
the hues in separate patches, and then telling you to mix
hues together as you. lay them on : but the separate masses
are to be laid, when colours distinctly oppose each other
158
COLOUR-ART.
at a given limit ; the hues to be mixed, when they palpi-
tate one through the other, or fade one into the other. It
is better to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told
you to paint the dark and light sides of the birch trunk
separately, though, in reality, the two tints change, as the
trunk turns away from the light, gradually one into the
other ; and, after being laid separately on, will need some
farther touching to harmonize them : but they do so in a very
narrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the trunk;
and it is easier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate
at first. Whereas it often happens that the whole beauty
of two colours will depend on the one being continued well
through the other, and playing in the midst of it: blue
and green often do so in water ; blue and gray, or purple
and scarlet, in sky ; in hundreds of such instances the most
beautiful and truthful results may be obtained by laying
one colour into the other while wet, judging wisely how
far it will spread, or blending it with the brush in some-
what thicker consistence of wet body-colour ; only observe,
never mix in this way two mixtures ; let the colour you
lay into the other be always a simple, not a compound tint.
B. Laying one colour over another.
If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and, after it is
quite dry, strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it,
you will obtain a much more brilliant red than by mixing
the carmine and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark
colour first, and strike a little blue or white body-colour
lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by
mixing the colour and the blue or white. In very perfect
painting, artifices of this kind are continually used ; but I
wTould not have you trust much to them : they are apt to
make you think too much of quality of colour. I should
like you to depend on little more than the dead colours,
simply laid on, only observe alwa}Ts this, that the less
colour you do the work with, the better it will always
COLOTJR-AKT.
159
be : * so that if you have laid a red colour, and you want
a purple one above, do not mix the purple on your palette
and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red, but take a
little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over
the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus pro-
duce the required purple ; and if you want a green hue
over a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the
blue, but a little yellow, and so on, always bringing the
under colour into service as far as you possibly can.
If, however, the colour beneath is wholly opposed to the
one you have to lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid
over scarlet, you must either remove the required parts of
the under colour daintily first with your knife, or with
water ; or else, lay solid white over it massively, and leave
that to dry, and then glaze the white with the upper
colour. This is better, in general, than laying the upper
colour itself so thick as to conquer the ground, which, in
fact, if it be a transparent colour, you cannot do. Thus,
if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees
over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their
places left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay
them first in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and
ochre, than to mix the sienna and white ; though, of
course, the process is longer and more troublesome.
Nevertheless, if the forms of touches required are very
delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must then
mix the warm colour thick at once, and so use it : and this
is often necessary for delicate grasses, and such other fine
threads of light in foreground work.
* If colours were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have
many more good paiuters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I
would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colours except black,
PruKsian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave
for students. I don't say this jestingly ; I believe such a tax would do
more to advance real art than a great many schools of design.
160
COLOUR-ART.
C. Breaking one colour in small points through or over
another.
This is the most important of all processes in good
modern* oil and water-colour painting, but yon need not
hope to attain very great skill in it. To do it well is very
laborious, and requires such skill and delicacy of hand as
can only be acquired by unceasing practice. But you
will find advantage in noting the following points :
(a) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or rip-
pled water, or broken clouds, much may be done by
touches or crumbling dashes of rather dry colour, with other
colours afterwards put cunningly into the interstices.
The more you practise this, when the subject evidently
calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher quali-
ties of colour. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of
the principle of separate colours to the utmost possible
refinement ; using atoms of colour in juxtaposition, instead
of large spaces. And note, in filling up minute inter-
stices of this kind, that if you want the colour you fill
them with to . show brightly, it is better to put a rather
positive point of it, with a little white left beside or round
it in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of the colour over
the whole interstice. Yellow or orange will hardly show,
if pale, in small spaces ; but they show brightly in firm
touches, however small, with white beside them.
(b) If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed por-
tions of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the
uppermost colour in rather vigorous small touches, like
finely chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it
on as a tint, for two reasons : the first, that the play of
the two colours together is pleasant to the eye ; the second,
that much expression of form may be got by wise adrain-
* I say modern, because Titian' s quiet way of blending colours, which,
is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist. The
best colour we reach is got by stippling ; but this is not quite right.
COLOUR-ART.
161
istration of the upper dark touches. In distant mountains
they may be made pines of, or -broken crags, or villages, or
stones, or whatever you choose ; in clouds they may indi-
cate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the
cloud masses ; and in water, the minor waves. All noble
effects of dark atmosphere are got in good water-colour
drawing by these two expedients, interlacing the colours,
or retouching the lower one with fine darker drawing in
an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric
effect is barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is
often useful for passages of delicate atmospheric light.
(c) When you have time, practise the 'production of
MIXED TINTS by INTERLACED TOUCHES of the PURE COLOURS
out of which they are formed, and use the process at the
parts of your sketches where you wish to get rich and
luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of
the Old Water-colour Society, in this respect, continually,
and make frequent memoranda of the variegations in
flowers ; not painting the flower completely, but laying
the ground colour of one petal, and painting the spots on
it with studious precision : a series of single petals of
lilies, geraniums, tulips, &c, numbered with proper refer-
ence to their position in the flower, will be interesting to
you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful to
get the gradated distribution of the spots well followed in
the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like ; and work out the
odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute
grains of pure interlaced colour, otherwise you will never
get their richness or bloom. You will find, first, the
universality of the law of gradation much insisted upon ;
secondly, that Nature is economical of her fine colours.
You would think, by the way she paints, that her colours
cost her something enormous: she will only give you a
single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light;
but down in the bell all is subdued, and under the petal
162
COLOUR-ART.
all is subdued, even in the showiest flower. What you
thought was bright blue is, when you look close, only dusty
gray., or green, or purple, or every colour in the world at
once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the
centre of it. And so with all her colours. Sometimes I
have really thought her miserliness intolerable : in a gen-
tian, for instance, the way she economises her ultramarine
down in the bell is a little too bad.
6. Next, respecting general tone of colour. I said, just
now, that, for the sake of students, my tax should not be
laid on black or on white pigments ; but if you mean to
be a colourist, you must lay a tax on them yourself
when you begin to use true colour ; that is to say, you
must use them little, and make of them much. There is
no better test of your colour tones being good, than your
having made the white in your picture precious, and the
black conspicuous.
I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely
glittering or brilliant ; it is easy to scratch white sea-
gulls out of black clouds, and dot clumsy foliage with
chalky dew ; but, when white is well managed, it ought
to be strangely delicious — tender as well as bright —
like inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed, in
milk. The eye ought to seek it for rest, brilliant though
it may be ; and to feel it as a space of strange, heavenly
paleness in the midst of the flushing of the colours. This
effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint,
by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except
where you need it, and by keeping the white itself sub-
dued by gray, except at a few points of chief lustre.
Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. How-
ever small a point of black may be, it ought to catch
the eya, otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow.
All the ordinary shadows should be of some colour —
never black, nor approaching black, they should be evi-
COLOUR-ART.
163
dently and always of a luminous nature, and the black
should look strange among them ; never occurring except
in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense
shade in the very centre of masses of shadow. Shadows
of absolutely negative grey, however, may be beautifully
used with white, or with gold ; but still though the
black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it
should always be conspicuous; the spectator should
notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy,
all the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour
and the white which it relieves. Of all the great
colourists Velasquez is the greatest master of the black
chords. His black is more precious than most other peo-
ples crimson.
It is not, however, only white and black which you
must make valuable ; you must give rare worth to every
colour you use ; but the white and black ought to separate
themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colours
should be continually passing one into the other, being all
evidently companions in the same gay world ; while the
white, black, and neutral grey should stand monkishly
aloof in the midst of them. You may melt your crimson
into purple, your purple into blue, and }^our blue into
green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You
should, however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all
your colours ; and this especially by never using a grain
more than will just do the work, and giving each hue the
highest value by opposition. All fine colouring, like fine
drawing, is delicate / and so delicate that if, at last, you
see the colour you are putting on, you are putting on too
much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the general
tone, by touches of colour which individually are too pale
to be seen ; and if there is one atom of any colour in the
whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts it.
Notice also, that nearly all good compound colours are
164
COLOUR-ART.
odd colours. You shall look at a hue in a good painter's
.work ten minutes before you know what to call it. You
thought it was brown, presently you feel that it is red ;
next that there is, somehow, yellow in it ; presently after-
wards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you
will always find your colour too warm or too cold — no
colour in the box will seem to have any affinity with
it; and yet it will be as pure as if it were laid at a single
touch with a single colour.
Thirdly, as to the choice and harmony of colours in
general, if you cannot choose and harmonize them by in-
stinct, you will never do it at all. If you need examples
of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you may find plenty
given in treatises upon colouring, to illustrate the laws of
harmony ; and if you want to colour beautifully, colour
as best pleases yourself at quiet times, not so as to catch
the eye, nor to look as if it were clever or difficult to
colour in that way, but so that the colour may be
pleasant to you when you are happy, or thoughtful.
Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much
at simple flowers — dog-roses, wood hyacinths, violets,
poppies, thistles, heather, and such like — as Nature
arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever any sci-
entific person tells you that two colours are " discordant,"
make a note of the two colours, and put them together
whenever you can. I have actually heard people say that
blue and green were discordant ; the two colours which
Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never
to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the
other ! — a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through green
leaves, or a blue wave with green lights through it, being
precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in
this coloured world of ours. If you have a good eye for
colours, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts
purple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and
COLOUR- ART.
165
blue, yellow and neutral grey, and the like ; and how she
strikes these colour-concords for general tones, and then
works into them with innumerable subordinate ones ; and
you will gradually come to like what she does, and hnd
out new and beautiful chords of colour in her work every
day. If you enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint
them to a certain point right : or, at least, if you do not
enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If
colour does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; de-
pend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and senses
of people who fed colour, whenever you touch it; and that
is unkind and improper. You will find, also, your power
of colouring depend much on your state of health and
right balance of mind ; when you are fatigued or ill you
will not see colours well, and when you are ill tempered
you will not choose them well : thus, though not infallibly
a test of character in individuals, colour power is a great
sign of mental health in nations ; when they are in a state
of intellectual decline, their colouring always gets dull.*
You must also take great care not to be misled by af-
fected talk about colour from people who have not the
gift of it : numbers are eager and voluble about it whc
probably never in all their lives received one genuine col-
our-sensation. The modern religionists of the school of
Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and
chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer
than strawberries and plums.
Fourthly, take care also never to be misled into any
idea that colour can help or display form / colour f always
disguises form, aud is meant to do so.
* The worst general character that colour can possibly have is a pre-
valent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying- heap
of vegetables ; this colour is accurately indicative of decline or paralysis
in missal-painting.
f That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The gradations
166
COLOUR-ART.
Fifthly \ it is a favourite dogma among modem writers
on colour that "warm colours" (reds and yellows) "ap-
proach" or express nearness, and "cold colours" (blue
and grey) " retire " or express distance. So far is this
from being the case, that no expression of distance in the
world is so great as that of the gold and orange in twilight
sky. Colours, as such, are absolutely inexpressive re-
specting distance. It is their quality (as depth, delicacy,
&c.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue
bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not
look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the
upper sky, will always appear to be beyond a blue cloud
close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in cer-
tain objects, blue is a sign of distance; but that is not
because blue is a retiring colour, but because the mist in
the air is blue, and therefore any warm colour which has
not strength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or
subdued in its blue : but blue is no more, on this account,
a "retiring colour," than brown is a retiring colour,
because, when stones are seen through brown water, the
deeper they lie the browner they look ; or than yellow is a
retiring colour, because, when objects are seen through a
London fog, the farther off they are the yellower they
of colour in the various shadows belonging to various lights exhibit
form, and therefore no one but a colourist can ever draw forms perfectly
(see Modem Painters, vol. iv., chap. iii. at the end) ; but all notions of
explaining form by superimposed colour, as in architectural mouldings,
are absurd. Colour adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple is
prettier, because it is striped, but it does not look a bit rounder ; and a
cheek is prettier because it is flushed, but you would see the form of
the cheek bone better if it were not. Colour may, indeed, detach one
shape from another, as in grounding a bas-relief, but it always di-
minishes the appearance of projection, and whether you put blue,
purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just
as clearly or just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colours are of
equal depth. The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of
an inch more than the red one.
COLOUR-ART.
167
look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, can have, as
such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or
distance : they express them only under the peculiar
circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that
place, signs of nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange
in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if you put the
orange a great way off, its colour will not look so bright ;
but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you
cannot get the colour of orange in a cloud near you. So
purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of nearness,
because the closer you look at them the more purple you
see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance,
because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green
or gray. It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a
tender or pale colour will more or less express distance,
-and a powerful or dark colour nearness ; but even this is
not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and
tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far
away ; the rose colour of sunset on suoav is pale on the
snow at your feet, deep and full on the snow in the dis-
tance ; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear
waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sun-
streak, six miles from shore. And in any case, when the
foreground is in strong light, with much water about it, or
white surface, casting intense reflections, all its colours
may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint ; while the dis-
tance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole fore-
ground with intense darks of purple, blue green, or
ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hope-
less and absurd to expect any help from laws of " aerial
perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set them
down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and never
alter a colour because it won't look in its right place.
Put the colour strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint,
if it be faint, though close to you. Why should you
168
COLOURISTS.
suppose that Nature always means you to know exactly
how far one thing is from another ? She certainly intends
you always to enjoy her colouring, but she does not wish
you always to measure her space. You would be hard
put to it, every time you painted the sun setting, if you
had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance in " aerial
perspective."
There is, however, I think, one law about distance,
which has some claims to be considered a constant one :
namel v, that dulness and heaviness of colour are more or
less indicative of nearness. All distant colour is pure
colour : it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not
opaque nor soiled ; for the air and light coming between
us and any earthy or imperfect colour, purify or harmonise
it ; hence a bad colourist is peculiarly incapable of ex-
pressing distance. I do not of course mean that you are
to use bad colours in your foreground by way of making
it come forward ; but only that a failure in colour, there,
will not put it out of its place ; while a failure in colour
in the distance will at once do away with its remoteness :
your dull-coloured foreground will still be a foreground,
though ill-painted ; but your ill-painted distance will not
be merely a dull distance, — it will be no distance at all.
Elements of Drawing-, 151-165.
[As to the art of colouring1, see further on page 295, § 16 etc.]
IV. COLOURISTS.
1. The colourists as to shadows.
The colourists painted masses or projecting spaces, and,
aiming always at colour, perceived from the first and held
to the last the fact that shadows, though of course darker
than the lights with reference to which they are shadows,
are not therefore necessarily less vigorous colours, but
perhaps more vigorous. Some of the most beautiful blues
and purples in nature, for instance, are those of moun-
COLOURISTS.
169
tains in shadow against amber sky ; and the darkness of
the hollow in the centre of a wild rose is one glow
of orange fire, owing to the quantity of its yellow sta-
mens.
Well, the Venetians always saw this, and all great
colourists see it, and are thus separated from the non-
col our ists or schools of mere chiaroscuro, not by difference
in style merely, but by being right while the others are
wronff. It is an absolute fact that shadows are as much
colours as lights are ; and whoever represents them by,
merely, the subdued or darkened tint of the light, repre-
sents them falsely. I particularly want you to observe
that this is no matter of taste, but fact. If you are espe-
cially sober-minded, you may indeed choose sober colours
where Venetians would have chosen gay ones ; that is a
matter of taste : you may think it proper for a hero to
wear a dress without, patterns on it, rather than an
embroidered one ; that is similarly a matter of taste, but
though you may also think it would be dignified for a hero's
limbs to be all black, or brown, on the shaded side of them,
yet, if you are using colour at all, you cannot so have him
to your mind, except by falsehood ; he never, under any
circumstances, could be entirely black or brown on one
side of him.
2. The colourists as to light.
In this, then, the Venetians are separate from other
schools by rightness, and they are so to their last days.
Venetian painting is in this matter always right. But
also, in their early days, the colourists are separated from
other schools by their contentment with tranquil cheerful-
ness of light / by their never wanting to be dazzled. Kone
of their lights are flashing or blinding; they are soft,
winning, precious; lights of pearl, not of lime : only, you
know, on this condition they cannot have sunshine : their
day is the day of Paradise ; they need no candle, neither
170
COLOURISTS.
light of the sim, in their cities ; and everything is seen
clear, as through crystal, far or near.
This holds to the end of the fifteenth century. Then
they begin to see that this, beautiful as it may be, is still
a make-believe light ; that we clo not live in the inside of
a pearl; but in an atmosphere through, which a burning
sun shines thwartedly, and over which a sorrowful night
must far prevail. And then the chiaroscurists succeed in
persuading them of the fact that there is mystery in the
day as in the night, and show them how constantly to see
truly, is to see dimly. And also they teach them the
brilliancy of light, and the degree in which it is raised
from the darkness ; and, instead of their sweet and pearly
peace, tempt them to look for the strength of name and
coruscation of lightning, and flash of sunshine on armor
and on points of spears.
The noble painters take the lesson nobly, alike for
gloom or flame. Titian with deliberate strength, Tintoret
with stormy passion, read it, side by side. Titian deepens
the hues of his Assumption, as of his Entombment, into
a solemn twilight ; Tintoret involves his earth in coils of
volcanic cloud, and withdraws, through circle flaming
above circle, the distant light of Paradise. Both of them,
becoming naturalist and human, add the veracity of Hol-
bein's intense portraiture to the glow and the dignity
they had themselves inherited from the Masters of Peace :
at the same moment another, as strong as they, and in
pure felicity of art-faculty, even greater than they, but
trained in a lower school, — Yelasquez, — produced the
miracles of colour and shadow-painting, which made Rey-
nolds say of him, 'What wre all do with labor, he does
with ease ; ' and one more, Correggio, uniting the sensual
element of the Greek schools with their gloom, and their
light with their beauty, and all these with the Lombardic
colour, became, as since I think it has been admitted
turner's truth of color.
171
without question, the captain of the painter's art as such.
Other men have nobler or more numerous gifts, but as a
painter, master of the art of laying colour so as to be
lovely, Correggio is alone. (See ante, 147.)
Lectures on Art , 7.
v. — turner's truth of colour.
1. There is, in the first room of the National Gallery,
a landscape attributed to Gaspar Poussin, called some-
times Arieia, sometimes Le or La Riccia, according to the
fancy of catalogue printers. Whether it can be supposed
to resemble the ancient Aricia, now La Kiccia, close to
Albano, T will not take upon me to determine, seeing that
most of the towns of these old masters are quite as like
one place as another; but, at any. rate, it is a town on a
hill, wooded with two-and -thirty bushes, of very uniform
size, and possessing about the same number of leaves
each. These bushes are all painted in with one dull
opaque brown, becoming very slightly greenish towards
the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock, which
of course would in nature have been cool and grey beside
the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being
moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scien-
tifically painted of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick
red, the only thing like colour in the picture. The fore-
ground is a piece of road, which in order to make allow-
ance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in
light, and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vege-
tation usually present on carriage-roads, is given in a very
cool green grey, and the truth of the picture is completed
by a number of dots in the sky on the right, with a stalk
to them, of a sober and similar brown.
2. Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of
carriage road, the first turn after you leave Albano, not a
little impeded by the worthy successors of the ancient
172
turner's truth op colour.
prototypes of Veiento.* It had been wild weather when
I left Home, and all across the Campagna the clouds
were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder
or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian
aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches like the
bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the
Alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and
the noble outline of the domes of Albano and graceful
darkness of its ilex grove rose against pure streaks of
alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flush-
ing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep,
palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. The noon-
day sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La
Riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose
autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a
thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain.
I cannot call it colour, it was conflagration, Purple, and
crimson, and scarlet, like, the curtains of God's tabernacle,
the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light,
every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning
life ; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sun-
beam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the
recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the
hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the
arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and
silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around
them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thou-
sand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the
weak Avind lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass
burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden
gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-
* " Csecus adulator —
Dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes,
Blandaque devexas jactaret basia rhedse."
turner's truth of colour.
173
lightning opens in a cloud at sunset ; the motionless
masses of dark rock — dark though unshed with scarlet
lichen, — casting their quiet shadows across its restless
radiance, the fountain underneath them rilling its marble
hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all — the
multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds
that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen
in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed re-
pose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the
last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where
the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.
3. Tell me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner? Not
in his most daring and dazzling efforts could Turner
himself come near it ; but you could not at the time
have thought or remembered the work of any other man
as having the remotest hue or resemblance of what you
saw. Nor am I speaking of what is uncommon or
unnatural ; there is no climate, no place, and scarcely an
hour, in which nature does not exhibit colour which no
mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our arti-
ficial pigments are, even when seen under the same
circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living col-
our ; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh
flower, no art nor expedient can reach ; but in addition to
this, nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sun-
light which trebles their brilliancy ; while the painter,
deprived of this splendid aid, works still with what" is
actually a grey shadow compared to the force of nature's
colour. Take a blade of grass and a scarlet flower,
and place them so as to receive sunlight beside the
brightest canvas that ever left Turner's easel, and the pic-
ture will be extinguished. So far from out-facing nature,
he does not, as far as mere vividness of colour goes, one-
half reach her; — but does he use this brilliancy of colour
on objects to which it does not properly belong? Let us
174
turner's trutpi of colour.
compare his works in this respect with a few instances
from the old masters.
4. There is, on the left hand side of Salvator's Mercury
and the Woodman in our National Gallery, something,
without doubt intended for a rocky mountain, in the
middle distance, near enough for all its fissures and
crags to be distinctly visible, or, rather, for a great
many awkward scratches of the brush over it to be visible,
which, though not particularly representative either of one
thing or another, are without doubt intended to be sym-
bolical of rocks. Now no mountain in full light, and near
enough for its details of crag to be seen, is without great
variety of delicate colour. Salvator has painted it through-
out without one instant of variation; but this, I suppose,
is simplicity and generalization; — let it pass: but what. is
the colour ? Pure sky blue, without one grain of grey, or
any modifying hue whatsoever; — the same brush which
had just given the bluest parts of the sky, has been more
loaded at the same part of the pallet, and the whole moun-
tain thrown in with unmitigated ultra-marine. Now moun-
tains only can become pure blue when there is so much air
between us and them that they become mere flat, dark
shades, every detail being totally lost : they become blue
when they become air, and not till then. Consequently
this part of Salvator's painting, being of hills perfectly
clear and near, with all their details visible, is, as far as
colour is concerned, broad, bold falsehood — the direct as-
sertion of direct impossibility.
In the whole range of Turner's works, recent or of old
date, you will not find an instance of anything near enough
to have details visible, painted in sky blue. Wherever
Turner gives blue, there he gives atmosphere ; it is air,
not object. Blue he gives to his sea ; so does nature ; —
blue he gives, sapphire-deep, to his extreme distance ; so
does nature ; — blue he gives to the misty shadows and
turner's truth of colour.
175
hollows of his hills ; so does nature : but blue he gives not,
where detail and illumined surface are visible ; as he comes
into light and character, so he breaks into warmth and
varied hue ; nor is there in one of his works, and I speak
of the Academy pictures especially, one touch of cold
colour which is not to be accounted for, and proved right
and full of meaning.
I do not say that Salvator's distance is not . artist-like ;
both in that, and in the yet more glaringly false distances of
Titian above alluded to, and in hundreds of others of equal
boldness of exaggeration, I can take delight, and perhaps
should be sorry to see them other than they are ; but it is
somewhat singular to hear people talking of Turner's ex-
quisite care and watchfulness in colour as false, while they
receive such cases of preposterous and audacious fiction
with the most generous and simple credulity.
5. Again, in the upper sky of the .picture of Xicolas
Poussin, before noticed, the clouds are of a very fine
clear olive-green, about the same tint as the brightest
parts of the trees beneath them. They cannot have
altered, (or else the trees must have been painted in
grey,) for the hue is harmonious and well united with the
rest of the picture, and the blue and white in the centre of
the sky are still fresh and pure. Xow a green sky in open
and illumined distance is very frequent, and very beautiful ;
but rich olive-green clouds, as far as I am acquainted with
nature, are a piece of colour in which she is not apt to in-
dulge. You will be puzzled to show me such a thing in
the recent works of Turner." Again, take any important
group of trees, I do not care whose— Claude's, Salvator's,
or Poussin's — with lateral light (that in the Marriage of
* There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great colourist
than his power of using greens in strange places without their being felt
as sueh, or at least than a constant preference of green grey to purple
grey. And this hue of Poussin's clouds would have been perfectly
176
turner's truth of colour.
Isaac and Rebecca, or Gaspar's Sacrifice of Isaac, for in-
stance :) Can it be seriously supposed that those murky
browns and melancholy greens are representative of the
tints of leaves under full noonday sun % I know that you
cannot help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of
dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the
distances ; but they are nothing of the kind — they are
noon and morning effects with full lateral light. Be so
kind as to match the colour of a leaf in the sun (the dark-
est you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched
colour and set it beside one of these groups of trees, and
take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any part
of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk
about the truth of colour of the old masters !
And let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidel-
ity of impression be brought forward here. I have noth-
ing whatever to do with this at present. I am not talking
about what is sublime, but about what is true. People
attack Turner on this ground ; — they never speak of beauty
or sublimity with respect to him, but of nature and truth,
and let them support their own favorite masters on the
same grounds. Perhaps I may have the very deepest ven-
eration for the feeling of the old masters, but I must not
let it influence me now— my business is to match colours,
not to talk sentiment. Neither let it be -said that I
am going too much into details, and that general truths
may be obtained by local falsehood. Truth is only to be
measured by close comparison of actual facts ; we may
talk forever about it in generals, and prove nothing. We
agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough in the
rest of the picture to have thrown it into grey. It is only because the
lower clouds are pure white and blue, and because the trees are of the
same colour as the clouds, that the cloud colour becomes false. There
is a fine instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned grey by the opposi-
tion of warm colour, in Turner's Devonport with the Dockyards.
turner's truth of colour.
177
cannot tell what effect falsehood may produce on this or
that person, but we can very well tell what is false and
what is not, and if it produce on our senses the effect of
truth, that only demonstrates their imperfection and inac-
curacy, and need of cultivation. Turner's colour is glar-
ing to one person's sensations, and beautiful to another's.
This proves nothing. Poussin's colour is right to one, soot
to another. This proves nothing. There is no means of
arriving at any conclusion but close comparison of both
with the known and demonstrable hues of nature, and
this comparison will invariably turn Claude or Poussin
into blackness, and even Turner into grey.
Whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the ob-
jects of a real landscape, yet a window with that landscape
seen through it, will invariably appear a broad space of
light as compared with the shade of the room walls ; and
this single circumstance may prove to us both the intensi-
ty and the diffusion of daylight in open air, and the ne-
cessity if a picture is to be truthful in effect of colour,
that it should tell as a broad space of graduated illumina-
tion— not, as do those of the old masters, as a patchwork
of black shades. Their works are nature in mourning
weeds, — oi)S' ev rfklw KaOapco TeOpafi/juevoc, aX)C vrrb crvfjL/nL-
ryel <JKia.
6. It is true that there are, here and there, in the Acad-
emy pictures, passages in which Turner has translated
the unattainable intensity of one tone of colour into the
attainable pitch of a higher one : the golden green for
instance, of intense sunshine on verdure, into pure yel-
low, because he knows it to be impossible, with any
mixture of blue whatsoever, to give faithfully its relative
intensity of light, and Turner always will have his light
and shade right, whatever it costs him in colour. But
he docs this in rare cases, and even then over very small
spaces ; and I should be obliged to his critics if they
178
turner's truth of colour.
would go out to some warm, mossy green bank in full
summer sunshine, and try to reach its tone ; and when
they find, as find they will, Indian yellow and chrome
look dark beside it, let them tell me candidly which is
nearest truth, the gold of Turner, or the mourning and
murky olive browns and verdigris greens in which
Claude, with the industry and intelligence of a Sevres
china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over
his childish foreground.
7. But it is singular enough that the chief attacks on
Turner for overcharged brilliancy, are made, not when
there could by any possibility be any chance of his out-
stepping nature, but when he has taken subjects which
no colours of earth could ever vie with or reach, such,
for instance, as his sunsets among the high clouds.
"When I come to speak of skies, I shall point out what
divisions, proportioned to their elevation, exist in the
character of clouds. It is the highest region, — that
exclusively characterized by white filmy, multitudinous,
and quiet clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks, or flakes,
of which I speak at present, a region which no landscape
painters have ever made one effort to represent, except
"Rubens and Turner — the latter taking it for his most
favourite and frequent study. Now we have been speak-
ing hitherto of what is constant and necessary in nature,
of the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colours,
and we repeat again, that no gorgeousness of the pallet
can reach even these. But it is a widely different thing
when nature herself takes a colouring fit, and does some-
thing extraordinary, something really to exhibit her
power. She has a thousand ways and means of rising
above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations
of her capability of colour are in these sunsets among the
high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the
gun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when
TURNER'S TRUTn or COLOUR.
179
this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-
forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of
vapour, which would in common daylight be pure snow
white, and which give therefore fair field to the tone of
light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no
check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole
sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten,
mantling sea of colour and fire ; every black bar turns
into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied,
shadowless, crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colours
for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in
the mind, — tilings which can only be conceived while they
are visible, — the intense hollow blue of the upper sky
melting through it all, — showing here deep, and pure,
and lightless, there, modulated by the filmy, formless
body of the transparent vapour, till it is lost impercep-
tibly in its crimson and gold. Now there is no connection,
no one link of association or resemblance between those
skies and the work of any mortal hand but Turner's.
He alone has followed nature in these her highest efforts ;
he follows her faithfully, but far behind ; follows at such,
a distance below her intensity that the Napoleon of last
year's exhibition, and the Temeraire of the year before,
would look colourless and cold if the eye came upon them
after one of nature's sunsets anions the high clouds.
8. But there are a thousand reasons why this should not
be believed. The concurrence of circumstances necessary
to produce the sunsets of which I speak does not take
place above five or six times in a summer, and then only
for a space of from five to ten minutes, just as the sun
reaches the horizon. Considering how seldom peojile
think of looking for sunset at all, and how seldom, if they
do, they are in a position from which it can be fully seen,
the chances that their attention should be awake, and
their position favourable, during these few flying instants
180
turner's truth or colour.
of the year, is almost as nothing. What can the citizen,
who can see only the red light on the canvas of the
wagon at the end of the street, and the crimson colour of
the bricks of his neighbour's chimney, know of the flood
of fire which deluges the sky from the horizon to the
zenith ? What can even the quiet inhabitant of the
English lowlands, whose scene for the manifestation of
the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of hayricks,
and the rooks' nests in the old elm-trees, know of the
mighty passages of splendour which are tossed from Alp
to Alp over the azure of a thousand miles of champaign ?
Even granting the constant vigor of observation, and
supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge,
it needs but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable
the memory is of retaining for any time the distinct
image of the sources even of its most vivid impressions.
What recollection have we of the sunsets which delighted
us last year? We may know that they were magnificent,
or glowing, but no distinct image of colour or form is
retained— nothing of whose degree (for the great difficulty
with the memory is to retain, not facts, but degrees of
fact) we could be so certain as to say of anv thing now
presented to us, that it is like it. If we did say so, we
should be wrong ; for we may be quite certain that the
energy of an inrpression fades from the memory, and
becomes more and more indistinct every day ; and thus
we compare a faded and indistinct image with the
decision and certainty of one present to the senses. How
constantly do we affirm that the thunder-storm of last
week was the most terrible one we ever saw in our lives,
because we compare it, not with the thunder-storm of last
year, but with the faded and feeble recollection of it.
And so, when we enter an exhibition, as we have no defi-
nite standard of. truth before us, our feelings are toned
down and subdued to the quietness of colour, which is all
turner's truth of colour.
181
that human power can ordinarily attain to ; and when we
turn to a piece of higher and closer truth, approaching
the pitch of the colour of nature, but to which Ave are
not guided, as we should be in nature, by corresponding
gradations of light everywhere around us, but which is
isolated and cut off suddenly by a frame and a wall, and
surrounded by darkness and coldness, wThat can we expect
but that it should surprise and shock the feelings ?
9. Suppose, where the Napoleon hung in the Academy
last year, there could have been left, instead, an opening in
the wall, and through that opening, in the midst of the
obscurity of the dim room and the smoke-laden atmos-
phere, there could suddenly have been poured the full
glory of a tropical sunset, reverberated from the sea:
How would you have shrunk, blinded, from its scarlet
and intolerable lightnings ! What picture in the room
would not have been blackness after it % And why then
do you blame Turner because he dazzles yon ? Does not
the falsehood rest with those who do not? There was
not one hue in this whole picture which was not far
below what nature would have used in the same cir-
cumstances, nor was there one inharmonious or at vari-
ance with the rest ; — the stormy blood-red of the hori-
zon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the rich crimson
browns of the wTet and illumined sea-weed ; the pure gold
and purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it all, the
deep passage of solemn blue, where the cold moonlight
fell on one pensive spot of the limitless shore — all were
given with harmony as perfect as their colour was intense ;
and if, instead of passing, as I doubt not you did, in the
hurry of your unreflecting prejudice, you had paused but
so much as one quarter of an hour before the picture, you
would have found the sense of air and space blended with
every line, and breathing in every cloud, and every colour
instinct and radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light.
182
turner's truth or colour.
10. It is to be observed, however, in general, that wherev-
er in brilliant effects of this kind, we approach to anything
like a true statement of nature's colour, there mnst yet be
a distinct difference in the impression we convey, because
we cannot approach -her light. All such hues are usually
given by her with an accompanying intensity of sun-
beams which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it
cannot rest on the actual colours, nor understand what
they are ; and hence in art, in rendering all effects of
this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of imitation,
which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary
observer; because we can only give one series of truths,
those of colour, and are unable to give the accompanying
truths of light, so that the more true we are in colour, the
greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between
the intensity of hue and the feebleness of light. But the
painter who really loves nature will not, on this account,
give you a faded and feeble image, which indeed may
appear to you to be right, because your feelings can
detect no discrepancy in its parts, but which he knows to
derive its apparent truth from a systematized falsehood.
.No; he will make you understand and feel that art
cannot imitate nature — that where it appears to do so, it
must malign her, and mock her. He will give you, or
state to you, such truths as are in his power, completely
and perfectly ; and those which he cannot give, he will
leave to your imagination. If you are acquainted with
nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you
will supply from your memory and from your heart that
light which he cannot give. If you are unacquainted
with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen to
satisfy your feelings; but do not ask for the truth which
you would not acknowledge and could not enjoy.
11. Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must
always be to do away with this discrepancy as far as the
turner's truth of colour.
183
powers of art admit, not by lowering his colour, but by
increasing his light. And it is indeed by this that the
works of Turner are peculiarly distinguished from those
of all other eolourists, by the dazzling intensity, namely,
of the light which he sheds through every hue, and
which, far more than their brilliant colour, is the real
source of their overpowering effect upon the eye, an effect
so reasonably made the subject of perpetual animadver-
sion, as if the sun which they represent were quite a
quiet, and subdued, and gentle, and manageable lumi-
nary, and never dazzled anybody, under any circum-
stances whatsoever. 1 am fond of standing by a bright
Turner in the Academy, to listen to the unintentional
compliments of the crowd — "What a glaring thing!"
" I declare I can't look at it ! " " Don't it hurt your
eyes?" — expressed as if they were in the constant habit
of looking the sun full in the face, with the. most perfect
comfort and entire facility of vision.
12. It is curious after hearing people malign some of
Turner's noble passages of light, to pass to some really
ungrammatical and false picture of the old masters, in
which we have colour given without light. Take, for
instance, the landscape attributed to Rubens, No. 175, in
the Dulwich Gallery. I never have spoken, and 1 never
will speak of Rubens but with the most reverential feel-
ing; and whatever imperfections in his art may have
resulted from his unfortunate want of seriousness and
incapability of true passion, his calibre of mind was origi-
nally such that I believe the world may see another Titian
and another Raffaelle, before it sees another Rubens.
But I have before alluded to the violent license he occa-
sionally assumes ; and there is an instance of it in this
pictuie apposite to the immediate question. The sudden
streak and circle of yellow and crimson in the middle of
the sky of that picture, being the occurrence of a frag-
184
turner's truth of colour.
merit of a sunset colour in pure daylight, and in perfect
isolation, while at the same time it is rather darker, when
.translated into light and shade, than brighter than the
rest of the sky, is a case of such bold absurdity, come
from whose pencil it may, that if every error which Tur-
ner has fallen into in the whole course of his life were
concentrated into one, that one would not equal it ; and
as our connoisseurs gaze upon this with never-ending ap-
probation, we must not be surprised that the accurate per-
ceptions which thus take delight in pure fiction, should
consistently be disgusted by Turner's fidelity and truth.
13. Hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vivid-
ness of pure colour, and showing that it is used by Turner
only where nature uses it, and in no less degree. But we
have hitherto, therefore, been speaking of a most limited
and uncharacteristic portion of his works ; for Turner,
like all great colourists, is distinguished not more for his
power of dazzling and overwhelming the eye with inten-
sity of effect, than for his power of doing so by the use of
subdued and gentle means. There is no man living more
cautious and sparing in the use of pure colour than Tur-
ner. To say that he never perpetrates anything like the
blue excrescences of foreground, or hills shot like a
housekeeper's best silk gown, with blue and reel, which
certain of our celebrated artists consider the essence of
the sublime, would be but a poor compliment. I might
as well praise the portraits of Titian because they have
not the grimace and paint of a clown in a pantomime ;
but I do say, and say with confidence, that there is
scarcely a landscape artist of the present day, however
sober and lightless their effects may look, who does not
employ more pure and raw colour than Turner; and that
the ordinary tinsel and trash, or rather vicious and peril-
ous stuff, according to the power of the mind producing
it, with which the walls of our Academy are half covered,
turner's truth of colour.
185
disgracing, in weak hands, or in more powerful, degrad-
ing and corrupting our whole school of art, is based on a
system of colour beside which Turner's is as Yesta to
Cotytto — the chastity of fire to the foulness of earth.
Every picture of this great colourist has, in one or two
parts of it, (kej^notes of the wdiole,) points where the sys-
tem of each individual colour is concentrated by a single
stroke, as pure as it can come from the pallet; but
throughout the great space and extent of even the most
brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw colour ;
that is to say, there is no warmth which has not grey in it,
and no blue which has not warmth in it; and the tints in
which he most excels and distances all other men, the
most cherished and inimitable portions of his colour, are,
as with all perfect colourists they must be, his greys.
It is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of
the Mercury and Argus with the various illustrations of the
serenity, space, and sublimity naturally inherent in blue
and pink, of which every year's exhibition brings forward
enough and to spare. In the Mercury and Argus, the
pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with
grey and pearly white, the gold colour of the light warm-
ing it more or less as it approaches or retires from the sun ;
but throughout, there is not a grain of pure blue ; all is
subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling
grey and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking
through the flaky mist, the transparent and deep azure of
the sky is expressed with a single crumbling touch ; the
key-note of the whole is given, and every part of it passes
at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader can
scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contra-
distinction to this, with great names attached to them, in
which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's
work, and should be valued per yard, with heavy extra
charge for ultramarine.
186
turner's truth of colour.
14. Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful
principle of delicate and subdued colour is carried out
with a care and labour of which it is difficult to form a
conception. He gives a dash of pure white for his
highest light ; but all the other whites of his picture are
pearled down with grey or gold. He gives a fold of
pure crimson to the drapery of his nearest figure, but all
his other crimsons will be deepened with black, or
warmed with yellow. In one deep reflection of his distant
sea, we catch a trace of the purest blue ; but all the rest
is palpitating with a varied and delicate gradation of har-
monized tint, which indeed looks vivid blue as a mass, but
is only so by opposition. It is the most difficult, the most
rare thing, to "find in his works a definite space, however
small, of unconnected colour ; that is, either of a blue
which has nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a
warm colour which has nothing to connect it with the greys
of the whole ; and the result is, that there is a general sys-
tem and under-current of grey pervading the whole of his
colour, out of which his highest lights, and those local
touches of pure colour, which are, as I said before, the key-
notes of the picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and
intensity in which he stands alone.
15. Intimately associated with this toning down and
connection of the colours actually used, is his inimitable
power of varying and blending them, so as never to give
a quarter of an inch of canvas without a change in it, a
melody as well as a harmony of one kind or another.
Observe, I am not at present speaking of this as artistical
or desirable in itself, not as a characteristic of the great
colourist, but as the aim of the simple follower of nature.
For it is strange to see how marvellously nature varies
the most general and simple of her tones. A mass of
mountain seen against the light, may, at first, appear all
of one blue ; and so it is, blue as a whole, by comparison
turner's truth of colour.
187
with other parts of the landscape. But look how that
blue is, made up. There are black shadows in it under
the crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there
are grey half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint
touches of stealthy warmth and cautious light along their
edges; every bush, every stone, every tuft of moss has its
voice in the matter, and joins with individual character
in the universal will. Who is there who can do this as
Turner will ? The old masters would have settled the
matter at once with a transparent, agreeable, but monoto-
nous grey. Many among the moderns would probably be
equally monotonous with absurd and false colours. Tur-
ner only would give the uncertainty — the palpitating,
perpetual change — the subjection of all to a great in-
fluence, without one part or portion being lost or merged
in it — the unity of action with infinity of agent.
16. And I wish to insist on this the more particularly,
because it is one of the eternal principles of nature, that
she will not have one line nor colour, nor one portion nor
atom of space without a change in it. There is not one
of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of per-
petual variation : I do not mean in time, but in space.
There is not a leaf in the world wdiich has the same col-
our visible over its whole surface ; it has a white high
light somewhere ; and in proportion as it curves to or
from that focus, the colour is brighter or greyer. Pick
up a common flint from the roadside, and count, if you
can, its changes and hues of colour. Every bit of bare
ground under your feet has in it a thousand such — the
grey pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient vege-
tation, the greys and blacks of its reflexes and shadows,
might keep a painter at work for a month, if he were
obliged to follow them touch for touch: how much more,
when the same infinity of change is carried out with
vastness of object and space. The extreme of distance
188
turner's truth of colour.
may appear at first monotonous ; but the least examina-
tion will show it to be full of every kind of change — that
its outlines are perpetually melting and appearing again
— sharp here, vague there — now lost altogether, now just
hinted and still confused among each other — and so
forever in a state and necessity of change. Hence,
wherever in a painting we have unvaried colour extended
even over a small space, there is falsehood. Nothing
can be natural which is monotonous ; nothing true which
only tells one story. The brown foreground and rocks
of Claude's Sinon before Priam are as false as colour can
be : first, because there never was such a brown under
sunlight, for even the sand and cinders (volcanic tufa)
about Naples, granting that he had studied from these
ugliest of all formations, are, where they are fresh
fractured, golden and lustrous in full light compared to
these ideals of crag, and become, like all other rocks, quiet
and grey when weathered ; and secondly, because no rock
that ever nature stained is without its countless breaking
tints of varied vegetation. And even Staufield, master as
he is of rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here
and there a little bit of mud, instead of stone.
17. What I am next about to say with respect to Tur-
ner's colour, I should wish to be received with caution,
as it admits of dispute. I think that the first approach to
viciousness of colour in any master is commonly indicated
chiefly by a prevalence of purple, and an absence of
yellow. I think nature mixes yellow with almost
every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using red
without it, but frequently using yellow with scarcely
any red ; and I believe it will be in consequence found
that her favourite opposition, that which generally charac-
terizes and gives tone to her colour, is yellow and black,
passing, as it retires, into white and blue. It is beyond
dispute that the great fundamental opposition of Eubens
turner's truth of colour.
189
is yellow and black; and that on this, concentrated in one
part of the picture, and modified in various greys through-
out, chiefly depend the tones of all his finest works. And
in Titian, though there is a far greater tendency to the
purple than in Rubens, I believe no red is ever mixed with
the pure blue, or glazed over it, which has not in it a
modifying quantity of yellow. At all events, I am nearly
certain that whatever rich and pure purples are introduced
locally, by the great colourists, nothing is so destructive of
all fine colour as the slightest tendency to purple in gene-
ral tone ; and I am equally certain that Turner is dis-
tinguished from all the vicious colourists of the present
day, by the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow,
and the intermediate greys, while the tendency of our
common glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossi-
ble purples. So fond indeed is Turner of black and yel-
low, that he has given us more than one composition, both
drawings and paintings, based on these two colours alone,
of which the magnificent Quilleboeuf, which I consider
one of the most perfect pieces of simple colour existing,
is a most striking example ; and I think that where, as in
some of the late Venices, there has been something like a
marked appearance of purple tones, even though exquisite-
ly corrected by vivid orange and warm green in the fore-
ground, the general colour has not been so perfect or
truthful : my own feelings would always guide me rather
to the warm greys of such pictures as the Snow Storm, or
the glowing scarlet and gold of the Napoleon and Slave
Ship. But I do not insist at present on this part of the
subject, as being perhaps more proper for future examina-
tion, when we are considering the ideal of colour.
18. The above remarks have been made entirely with re-
ference to the recent Academy pictures, which have been
chiefly attacked for their colour. I by no means intend
them to apply to the early works of Turner, those which
190
turner's truth of colour.
the enlightened newspaper critics are perpetually talking
about as characteristic of a time when Turner was "really
great." He is, and was, really great, from the time when
he first could hold a brush, but he never was so great
as he is now. The Crossing the Brook, glorious as it is as
a composition, and perfect in all that is most desirable
and most ennobling in art, is scarcely to be looked upon
as a piece of colour; it is an agreeable, cool, grey
rendering of space and form, but it is not colour; if
it be regarded as such, it is thoroughly false and vapid,
and very far inferior to the tones of the same kind given
by Claude. The reddish brown in the foreground of
the Fall of Carthage, with all diffidence be it spoken,
is, as far as my feelings are competent to judge, crude,
sunless, and in every way wrong ; and both this picture
and the Building of Carthage, though this latter is far
the finer of the two, are quite unworthy of Turner as
a colourist.
19. Not so with the drawings ; these, countless as they
are, from the earliest to the latest, though presenting
an unbroken chain of increasing difficulty overcome,
and truth illustrated, are all, according to their aim,
equally faultless as to colour. Whatever we have hith-
erto said, applies to them in its fullest extent; though
each, being general \y the realization of some effect
actually seen, and realized but once, requires almost a
separate essay. As a class, they are far quieter and
chaster than the Academy pictures, and, were they better
known, might enable our connoisseurs to form a some-
what more accurate judgment of the intense study of
nature on which all Turner's colour is based.
20. One point only remains to be noted respecting his
system of colour generally — its entire subordination to
light and shade, a subordination which there is no need
to prove here, as every engraving from his works — and
turner's truth of colour.
191
few are unengraved — is sufficient demonstration of it.
I have before shown the inferiority and unimportance
in nature of colour, as a truth, compared with light
and shade. That inferiority is maintained and asserted
by all really great works of colour; but most by Turner's,
as their colour is most intense. Whatever brilliancy
he may choose to assume, is subjected to an inviolable
laio of chiaroscuro, from which there is no appeal. JYo
richness nor depth of tint is considered of value enough
to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light.
No brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with
the depth of a determined shadow. And hence it is,
that while engravings from works far less splendid in
colour are often vapid and cold, because the little colour
employed has not been rightly based on light and shade,
an engraving from Turner is always beautiful and forci-
ble in proportion as the colour of the original has been
intense, and never in a single instance has failed to
express the picture as a perfect composition.* Powerful
and captivating and faithful as his colour is, it is the least
* This is saying too much ; for it Jiot unfrequently happens that the
light and shade of the original is lost in the engraving, the effect of
which is afterwards partially recovered, with the aid of the artist him-
self, by introductions of new features. Sometimes, when a drawing
depends chiefly on colour, the engraver gets unavoidably embarrassed,
and must be assisted by some change or exaggeration of the effect ; but
the more frequent case is, that the engraver's difficulties result merely
from his inattention to, or wilful deviations from his original ; and that
the artist is obliged to assist him by such expedients as the error itself
suggests.
Not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in review-
ing a picture after some time has elapsed since its completion, even the
painter is liable to make unnecessary or hurtful changes. In the plate
of the Old Temeraire, lately published in Finden's gallery, I do not
know whether it was Turner or the engraver who broke up the water
into sparkling ripple, but it was a grievous mistake, and has destroyed
the whole dignity and value of the conception. The flash of lightning
192
turner's truth of colour.
important of all his excellences, because it is the least im-
portant feature of nature. He paints in colour, but he
thinks in light and shade; and were it necessary, rather
than lose one line of his forms, or one ray of his sunshine,
would, I apprehend, be content to paint in black and
white to the end of his life. It is by mistaking the shadow
for the substance, and aiming at the brilliancy and the fire,
without perceiving of what deejD-studied shade and inimi-
table form it is at once the result and the illustration, that
the host of his imitators sink into deserved disgrace. With
in the Winchelsea of the England series does not exist in the original ;
it is put in to withdraw the attention of the spectator from the sky
which the engraver destroyed.
There is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that
colour can be expressed by particular characters of line ; and in the en-
deavour to distinguish by different lines, different colours of equal depth,
they frequently lose the whole system of light and shade. It will hardly
be credited that the piece of foreground on the left of Turner's Modem
Italy, represented in the Art-Union engraving as nearly coal black, is
in the original of a pale warm grey, hardly darker than the sky. All
attempt to record colour in engraving, is heraldry out of its place : the
engraver has no power beyond that of expressing transparency or
opacity by greater or less openness of line, (for the same depth of tint
is producible by lines with very different intervals.)
Texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel, and
ought not to be laboriously sought after ; nature's surfaces are distin-
guished more by form than texture ; a stone is often smoother than a
leaf ; but if texture is to be given, let the engraver at least be sure that
he knows what the texture of the object actually is, and how to repre-
sent it. The leaves in the foreground of the engraved Mercury and
Argus have all of them three or four black lines across them. What
sort of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these ? The stones
in the foreground of Turner's Llanthony received from the artist the
powdery texture of sandstone ; the engraver covered them with con-
torted lines and turned them into old timber.
A still more fatal cause of failu-e is the practice of making out or
finishing what the artist left incomplete. In the England plate of Dud-
ley, there are two offensive blank windows in the large building. with the
chimney on the left. These are engraver's improvements ; in the
original they are barely traceable, their lines being excessively faint
TURNER'S TRUTH OF COLOUR.
193
him, as with all the greatest painters, and in Turner's
more than all, the hue is a beautiful auxiliary in working
out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not the
source nor the essence of that impression ; it is little more
than a visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind
in the reception of nobler ideas — as sacred passages of
sweet sound, to prepare the feelings for the reading of the
mysteries of God.
1 M. P., 152. See Two Paths, Appendix, 216; El. Drawing, 160-6;
Temperance in Colour, 3 S.V., 5.
and tremulous as with the movement of heated air between them and
the spectator : their vulgarity is thus taken away, and the whole build-
ing- left in one grand unbroken mass. It is almost impossible to break
engravers of this unfortunate habit. I have even heard of their taking
journeys of some distance in order to obtain knowledge of the details
which the artist intentionally omitted ; and the evil will necessarily
continue until they receive something like legitimate artistical educa-
tion. In one or two instances, however, especially in small plates, they
have shown great f eeling ; the plates of Miller (especially those of the
Tamer illustrations to Scott) are in most instances perfect and beautiful
interpretations of the originals ; so those of G-oodall in Rogers's works,
and Cousens's in the Rivers of France ; those of the Yorkshire series
are also very valuable, though singularly inferior to the drawings. But
none even of these men appear capable of producing a large plate. They
have no knowledge of the means of rendering their lines vital or valu-
able ; cross-hatching stands for everything ; and inexcusably, for though
we cannot expect every engraver to etch like Rembrandt or Albert
Durer, or every wood-cutter to draw like Titian, at least something of
the system and power of the grand works of those men might be pre-
served, and some mind and meaning stolen into the reticulation of the
restless modern lines.
9
CHAPTEE IX.
OF TETJTH OF CHIAEOSCTTEO OE THE GEEEK SCHOOL.
1. It is not my intention to enter, in the present portion
of the work, upon any examination of Turner's particular
effects of light. We must know something about what is
beautiful before we speak of these.
At present I wish only to insist upon two great princi-
ples of chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout the
works of the great modern master, and set at defiance by
the ancients — great general laws, which may, or may not,
be sources of beauty, but whose observance is indisputa-
bly necessary to truth.
Go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for a
tree with a broad trunk, having rather delicate boughs
hanging down on the sunny side, near the trunk. Stand
four or five yards from it, with your back to the sun.
You will find that the boughs between you and the trunk
of the tree are very indistinct, that you confound them in
places with the trunk itself, and cannot possibly trace one
of them from its insertion to its extremity. But the
shadows which they cast upon the trunk, you will find
clear, dark, and distinct, perfectly traceable through their
whole course, except when they are interrupted by the
crossing boughs. And -if you retire backwards, you will
come to a point where you cannot see the intervening
boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there,
but can still see their shadows perfectly plain. Xow, this
may serve to show you the immense prominence and im-
portance of shadows where there is anything like bright
light. They are, in fact, commonly far more conspicuous
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
195
than the thing which casts them, for being as large as the
casting object, and altogether made up of a blackness
deeper than the darkest part of the casting object (while
that object is also broken np with positive and reflected
lights), their large, broad, unbroken spaces tell strongly
on the eye, especially as all form is rendered partially,
often totally invisible within them, and as they are sud-
denly terminated by the sharpest lines which nature ever
shows. For no outline of objects whatsoever is so sharp
as the edge of a close shadow. Put your ringer over a
piece of white paper in the sun, and observe the difference
between the softness of the outline of the linger itself and
the decision of the edge of the shadow. And note also
the excessive gloom of the latter. A piece of black cloth,
laid in the light, will not attain one-fourth of the black-
ness of the paper under the shadow.
2. Hence shadows are in reality, ivhen the sun is shin-
ing, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the
highest lights. All forms are understood and explained
chiefly by their agency : the roughness of the bark of a
tree, for instance, is not seen in the light, nor in the
shade ; it is only seen between the two, where the shadows
of the ridges explain it. And hence, if we have to ex-
press vivid light, our very first aim must be to get the
shadows sharp and visible • and this is not to be done by
blackness (though indeed chalk on white paper is the only
thing which comes up to the intensity of real shadows),
but by keeping them perfectly flat, keen, and even. A
very pale shadow, if it be quite flat — if it conceal the
details of the objects it crosses — if it be grey and cold
compared' to their color, and very sharp edged, will be
far more conspicuous, and make everything out of it look
a great deal more like sunlight, than a shadow ten times
its depth, shaded off at the edge, and confounded with the
colour of the objects on which it falls.
196
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
3. Now the old masters of the Italian school, in almost all
their works, directly reverse this principle : they blacken
their shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, and
everything in it invisible ; but they make a point of losing
their edges, and carrying them off by gradation ; in conse-
quence utterly destroying every appearance of sunlight.
All their shadows are the faint, secondary darknesses of
mere daylight y the sun has nothing whatever to do with
them. The shadow between the pages of the book which
you hold in your hand is distinct and visible enough
(though you are, I suppose, reading it by the ordinary day-
light of your room), out of the sun ; and this weak and
secondary shadow is all that we ever find in the Italian
masters as indicative of sunshine.
4. Even Cuyp and Berghem, though they know thorough-
ly well what they are about in their foregrounds, forget the
principle in their distances / and though in Claude's sea-
ports, where he has plain architecture to deal with, he gives
us something like real shadows along the stones, the moment
we come to ground and foliage with lateral light, away go
the shadows and the sun together. In the Marriage of Isaac
and Rebecca, in our own gallery, the trunks of the trees
between the water-wheel and the white figure in the
middle distance, are dark and visible ; but their shadows
are scarcely discernible on the ground, and are quite
vague and lost in the building. In nature, every bit of
the shadow would have been darker than the darkest part
of the trunks, and both on the ground and building would
have been defined and conspicuous ; while the trunks them-
selves would have been faint, confused, and indistinguish-
able, in their illumined parts, from the grass or distance.
So in Poussin's Phocion, the shadow of the stick on the
stone in the right hand corner is shaded off and lost, while
you see the stick plain all the way. In nature's sunlight
it would have been the direct reverse — you would have
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
197
seen the shadow black and sharp all the way down; bnt
yon would have had to look for the stick, which in all
probability would in several places have been confused
with the stone behind it.
And so throughout the works of Claude, Poussin, and
Salvator, we shall find, especially in their conventional
foliage, and un articulated barbarisms of rock, that their
whole sum and substance of chiaroscuro is merely the gra-
dation and variation which nature gives in the body of
her shadows, and that all which they do to express sun-
shine, she does to vary shade. They take only one step,
while she always takes two ; marking, in the first place,
with violent decision, the great transition from sun to
shade, and then varying the shade itself with a thousand
gentle gradations and double shadows, in themselves
equivalent, and more than equivalent, to all that the old
masters did for their entire chiaroscuro.
5. Now if there be one principle, or secret more than
another, on which Turner depends for attaining brilliancy
of light, it is his clear and exquisite drawing of the
shadows. Whatever is obscure, misty, or undefined in
his objects or his atmosphere, he takes care that the
shadows be sharp and clear — and then he knows that the
light will take care of itself, and he makes them clear,
not by blackness, but by excessive evenness, unity, and
sharpness of edge. He will keep them clear and distinct,
and make them felt as shadows, though they are so faint,
that, but for their decisive forms, we should not hare ob-
served them for darkness at all. He will throw them one
after another like transparent veils, along the earth and
upon the air, till the whole picture palpitates with them,
and yet the darkest of them will be a faint grey, imbued
and penetrated with light. The pavement on the left of the
Hero and Leander is about the most thorough piece of this
kind of sorcery that I remember in art ; but of the general
198 OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
principle, not one of his works is without constant evi-
dence. Take the vignette of the garden opposite the
title-page of Rogers's Poems, and note the drawing of the
nearest balustrade on the right. The balusters themselves
are faint and misty, and the light through them feeble ;
but the shadows of them are sharp and dark, and the in-
tervening light as intense as it can be left. And see how
much more distinct the shadow of the running figure is on
the pavement, than the checkers of the pavement itself.
Observe the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page 91,
how they conquer all the details of the trunk itself, and
become darker and more conspicuous than any part of the
boughs or limbs, and so in the vignette to Campbell's
Beech-tree's Petition. Take the beautiful concentration
of all that is most characteristic of Italy as she is, at page
168 of Rogers's Italv, where we have the loner shadows of
the trunks made by far the most conspicuous thing in the
whole foreground, and hear how Wordsworth, the keenest-
eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in
nature, illustrates Turner here, as we shall find him doing
in all other points.
"At the rootT
Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare
And slender stem, while here I sit at eve,
Oft stretches tow'rds rne, like a long straight path,
Traced faintly in the greensward."
Excursion, Book VI.
So again in the Rhymer's Grlen (Illustrations to Scott),
note the intertwining of the shadows across the path, and
the checkering of the trunks by them ; and again on the
bridge in the Armstrong's Tower; and yet more in the
long avenue of Brieime, where we have a length of two or
three miles expressed by the playing shadows alone, and
the whole picture filled with sunshine by the long lines of
darkness cast by the figures on the snow. The Hampton
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
199
Court in the England series, is another very striking in-
stance. In fact, the general system of execution observ-
able in all Turner's drawings, is to work his grounds
richly and fully, sometimes stippling, and giving infinity
of delicate, mysterious, and ceaseless detail ; and on the
ground so prepared to cast his shadows with one dash of
the brush, leaving an excessively sharp edge of watery color.
6. Such at least is commonly the case in such coarse and
broad instances as those I have above given. Words are
not accurate enough, nor delicate enough to express or
trace the constant, all-pervading influence of the finer and
vaguer shadows throughout his works, that thrilling in-
fluence which gives to the light they leave, its passion and
its power. There is not a stone, not a leaf, not a cloud,
over which light is not felt to be actually passing and pal-
pitating before our eyes. There is the motion, the actual
wave and radiation of the darted beam — not the dull uni-
versal daylight, which falls on the landscape without life,
or direction, or speculation equal on all things and dead
on all things ; but the breathing, animated, exultant light,
which feels, and receives, and rejoices, and acts — which
chooses one thing and rejects another — which seeks, and
finds, and loses again — leaping from rock to rock, from
leaf to leaf, from wave to wave — glowing, or flashing, or
scintillating, according to what it strikes, or in its holier
moods, absorbing and enfolding all things in the deep ful-
ness of its repose, and then again losing itself in bewilder-
ment, and doubt, and dimness ; or perishing and passing
away, entangled in drifting mist, or melted into melan-
choly air, but still — kindling, or declining, sparkling or
still, it is the living light, which breathes in its deepest,
most entranced rest, which sleeps, but ilever dies.
7. I need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinction
between the works of the old masters and those of the great
modern landscape-painters in this respect. It is one which
200
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
the reader can perfectly well work out for himself, by the
slightest systematic attention, — one which lie will find ex-
isting, not merely between this work and that, bnt through-
out the whole body of their productions, and down to every
leaf and line. And a little careful watching of nature,
especially in her foliage and foregrounds, and comparison
of her with Claude, Graspar Poussin, and Salvator, will
soon show him that those artists worked entirely on con-
ventional principles, not representing what they saw, but
what they thought would make a handsome picture ; and
even when they went to nature, which I believe to have
been a very much rarer practice with them than their
biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like
children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not
what they saw there.45" I believe you may search the fore-
grounds of Claude, from one end of Europe to an-
other, and you will not find the shadow of one leaf cast
upon another. You will find leaf after leaf painted more
or less boldly or brightly out of the black ground, and
you will find dark leaves defined in perfect form upon
the light ; but you will not find the form of a single leaf
disguised or interrupted by the shadow of another. And
Poussin and Salvator are still farther from anything like
genuine truth. There is nothing in their pictures which
might not be manufactured in their painting-room, with a
branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of weeds
before them, to give them the form of the leaves. And
it is refreshing to turn from their ignorant and impotent
repetitions of childish conception, to the clear, close, gen-
uine studies of modern artists; for it is not Turner only
(though here, as in all other points, the first), who is
remarkable for fine and expressive decision of chiaro-
scuro. Some passages by J. D. Harding are thoroughly
* Compare Sect. II. Chap. II. § 6.
OF TRUTH OF CJIIxVROSCURO.
201
admirable in this respect, though this master is getting a
little too much into a habit of general keen execution,
which prevents the parts which ought to be especially de-
cisive from being felt as such, and which makes his pic-
tures, especially the large ones, look a little thin. But
some of his later passages of rock foreground have, taken
in the abstract, been beyond all praise, owing to the ex-
quisite forms and firm expressiveness of their shadows.
And the chiaroscuro of Stanfield is equally deserving of
the most attentive study.
8. The second point to which I wish at present to direct
attention has reference to the arrangement of light and
shade. It is the constant habit of nature to use both her
highest lights and deepest shadows in exceedingly srncdl
quantity ; always in points, never in masses* She will
give a large mass of tender light in sky or water, impres-
sive by its quantity, and a large mass of tender shadow
relieved against it, in foliage, or hill, or buildiiio; but the
light is alioays subdued if it he extensive — the shadow
alvmys feeble if it be broad. She will then fill up all the
rest of her picture with middle tints and pale greys of
some sort or another, and on this quiet and harmonious
whole, she will touch her high lights in spots — the foam
of an isolated wave — the sail of a solitary vessel — the flash
of the sun from a wet roof — the gleam of a single white-
washed cottage — or some such sources of local brilliancy,
she will use so vividly and delicately as to throw every-
thing else into definite shade by comparison. And then
taking up the gloom, she will use the black hollows of
some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some shaded
figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or win-
dow, so sharply as to throw everything else into definite
light by comparison ; thus reducing the whole mass of her
* Elements of Drawing, 03, note.
9*
202
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
picture to a delicate middle tint, approaching, of course,
here to light, and there to gloom; but yet sharply sepa-
rated from the utmost decrees either of the one or the
other.
9. Now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on
art seem to have noticed the great principle of nature in
this respect. They all talk of deep shadow as a thing
that may be given in quantity, — one-fourth of the picture,
or, in certain effects, much more. Barry, for instance,
says that the practice of the great painters, who " best
understood the effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most
part, to make the mass of middle tint larger than the
light, and the mass of dark larger than the masses of light
and middle tint together, i. <?., occupying more than one-
half of the picture. Now I do not know what we are to
suppose is meant by " understanding chiaroscuro." If it
means being able to manufacture agreeable patterns in
the shape of pyramids, and crosses, and zigzags, into which
arms and legs are to be persuaded, and passion and mo-
tion arranged, for the promotion and encouragement of
the cant of criticism, such a principle may be productive
of the most advantageous results. But if it means, being
acquainted with the deep, perpetual, systematic, unintru-
sive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's chiaro-
scuro— if it means the perception that blackness and sub-
limity are not synonymous, and that space and light may
possibly be coadjutors — then no man, who ever advocated
or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a
novice, blunderer, and trickster in chiaroscuro.
10. And my firm belief is, that though colour is inveighed
against by all artists, as the great Circe of art— the great
transformer of mind into sensuality — no fondness for it, no
study of it, is half so great a peril and stumbling-block to
the young student, as the admiration he hears bestowed on
such artificial, false, and juggling chiaroscuro, and the in-
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
203
struction he receives, based on such principles as that
given us by Fuseli — that " mere natural light and shade,
however separately or individually true, is not always
legitimate chiaroscuro in art." It may not always be
agreeable to a sophisticated, unfeeling, and perverted
mind ; but the student had better throw up his art at once
than proceed on the conviction that any other can ever be
legitimate. I believe I shall be perfectly well able to
prove, in following parts of the work, that " mere natural
light and shade " is the only fit and faithful attendant of
the highest art ; and that all tricks — all visible, intended
arrangement — all extended shadows and narrow lights — ■
everything, in fact, in the least degree artificial, or tend-
ing to make the mind dwell upon light and shade as such,
is an injury, instead of an aid, to conceptions of high ideal
dignity. I believe I shall be able also to show that nature
manages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and
cleverly than people fancy ; — that " mere natural light
and shade" is a very much finer thing than most artists
can put together, and that none think they can improve
upon it but those who never understood it.
11. But however this may be, it is beyond dispute that
every permission given to the student to amuse himself
with painting one figure all black, and the next all white,
and throwing them out with a background of nothing —
every permission given to him to spoil his pocket-book
with sixths of sunshine and sevenths of shade, and other
such fractional sublimities, is so much more difficulty laid
in the way of his ever becoming a master ; and that none
are in the right road to real excellence but those who are
struggling to render the simplicity, purity, and inexhaus-
tible variety of nature's own chiaroscuro in open, cloud-
less daylight, giving the expanse of harmonious light —
the speaking, decisive shadow — and the exquisite grace,
tenderness, and grandeur of aerial opposition of local
204
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
colour and equally illuminated lines. ~No chiaroscuro is so
difficult as this ; and none so noble, chaste or impressive.
On this part of the subject, however, I must not enlarge
at present. I wish now only to speak of those great prin-
ciples of chiaroscuro which nature observes, even when
she is most working for effect — when she is playing with
thunderclouds and sunbeams, and throwing one thing out
and obscuring another, with the most marked artistical
feeling and intention; — even then, she never forgets her
great rule, to give precisely the same quantity of deepest
shade which she does of highest light, and no more /
points of the one answering to points of the other, and
both vividly conspicuous and separated from all the rest
of the landscape.
12. And it is most singular that this separation, which is
the great source of brilliancy in nature, should not only be
unobserved, but absolutely forbidden by our great writers
on art, who are always talking about connecting the light
with the shade by imperceptible gradations. Now so
surely as this is done, all sunshine is lost, for impercep-
tible gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of
objects seen out of sunshine, in what is, in landscape,
shadow. Nature's principle of getting light is the direct
reverse. She will cover her whole landscape with middle
tint, in which she will have as many gradations as you
please, and a great many more than you can paint ; but on
this middle tint she touches her extreme lights, and ex-
treme darlis, isolated and sharp, so that the eye goes to
them directly, and feels them to be key-notes of the whole
composition. And although the dark touches are less at-
tractive than the light ones, it is not because they are less
distinct, but because they exhibit nothing; while the
bright touches are in parts where everything is seen, and
where in consequence the eye goes to rest. But yet the
high lights do not exhibit anything in themselves, they are
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
205
too bright and dazzle the eye ; and having no shadows in
them, cannot exhibit form, for form can only be seen by
shadow of some kind or another. Hence the highest lights
and dee-pest darks agree in this, that nothing is seen in
either of them ; that both are in exceedingly small quan-
tity, and both are marked and distinct from the middle
tones of the landscape — the one by their brilliancy, the
other by their sharp edges, even though many of the more
energetic middle tints may approach their intensity very
closely.
13. I need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at
any one of the works of Turner, and you will perceive in
a moment the exquisite observation of all these principles ;
the sharpness, decision, conspicuousness, and excessively
small quantity, both of extreme light and extreme shade,
all the mass of the picture being graduated and delicate
middle tint. Take up the Rivers of France, for instance,
and turn over a few of the plates in succession.
1. Chateau Gaillard (vignette). — Black figures and boats,
points of shade ; sun-touches on castle, and wake of boat,
of light. . See how the eye rests on both, and observe how
sharp and separate all the lights are, falling in spots, edged
by shadow, but not melting off into it.
2. Orleans. — The crowded figures supply both points
of shade and light. Observe the delicate middle tint of
both in the whole mass of buildings, and compare this
with the blackness of Canaletto's shadows, against which
neither figures nor anything else can ever tell, as points of
shade.
3. Blois. — White figures in boats, buttresses of bridge,
dome of church on the right, for light ; woman on horse-
back, heads of boats, for shadow. Note especially the
isolation of the light on the church dome.
4. Chateau de Blois. — Torches and white figures for
light, roof of chapel and monks' dresses for shade.
206
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
5. Beaugency. — Sails and spire opposed to buoy and
boats. An exquisite instance of brilliant, sparkling, iso-
lated touches of morning light.
6. AmboisC. — White sail and clouds ; cypresses under
castle.
7. Chateau of Amboise. — The boat in the centre, with its
reflections, needs no comment. Note the glancing lights
under the bridge. This is a very glorious and perfect
instance.
8. St. Julien, Tours. — Especially remarkable for its
preservation of deep points of gloom, because the whole
picture is one of extended shade.
I need scarcely go on. The above instances are taken
as they happen to come, without selection. The reader
can proceed for himself. I may, however, name a few
cases of chiaroscuro more especially deserving of his study.
Scene between Quilleboeuf and Yillequier, — Tlonfleur, —
Light Towers of the ITeve, — On the Seine between Mantes
and Vernon, — The Lantern at St. Cloud, — Confluence of
Seine and Marne, — Troyes, — the first and last vignette,
and those at pages 36, 63, 95, 184, 192, 203, of Eogers's
Poems ; the first and second in Campbell, St. Maurice in
the Italy, where note the black stork ; Brienne, Skiddaw,
Mayburgh, Melrose, Jedburgh, in the illustrations to Scott,
and the vignettes to Milton, not because these are one whit
superior to others of his works, but because the laws of
which we have been speaking are more strikingly de-
veloped in them, and because they have been well engrav-
ed. It is impossible to reason from the larger plates, in
which half the chiaroscuro is totally destroyed by the
haggling, blackening and " making out " of the engravers.
1 M. P., 171.
Elements of Drawing-, 79, et seq. ; Lectures on Art, 155 ; Kinds of
Light, 179, et passim.
U. — Landscape Art.
CHAPTER I.
PERSPECTIVE.
1. Perspective is not of the slightest use, except in rudi-
mentary work. You can draw the rounding line of a ta-
ble in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep of a
sea bay ; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you
cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and
few to be applied to any subtle form; therefore, as yon
must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye, certainly
you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever
trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of
them know its laws ; they draw everything by the eye,
and, naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their
work rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It
would take about a month's labour to draw imperfectly,
by laws of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw
perfectly in five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath
of leaves round a head, or bending the curves of a pattern
'in and out among the folds of drapery. It is true that
when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused
themselves with it * and all the great painters put fine
saloons and arcades behind their madonnas, merely to show
that they could draw in perspective : but even this was
generally done by them only to catch the public eye, and
208
PERSPECTIVE.
they disdained the perspective so much, that though they took
the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim
of a crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would
twist their capitals of columns and towers of churches about
in the background in the most wanton way, wherever they
liked the lines to go, provided only they left just perspec-
tive enough to please the public. In modem days, I
doubt if any artist among us, except David Roberts, knows
so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic
arch to scale, at a given angle and distance. Turner,
though he was professor of perspective to the Royal Acad-
emy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far as
I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in his
life ; he drew them only with as much perspective as suited
him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted
his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked.
I do not justify this ; and would recommend the student
at least to treat perspective with common civility, but to
pay no court to it. The best way he can learn it, by him-
self, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in a frame, so that
it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance at
which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen. Let
the eye be placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle
of the pane of glass, but as high or as low as the student
likes ; then with a brush at the end of a stick, and a little
body-colour that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the
landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them
through it. When so traced they are all in true perspec-
tive. If the glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are
still in true perspective, only it is perspective calculated for
a sloping plane, while common perspective always supposes
the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, in early
practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, before
sketching it, with a light frame of wood held upright before
you ; it will show you what you may legitimately take into
PERSPECTIVE.
209
your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow
foreground near you, and a wide one farther off ; also, what
height of tree or building you can properly take in, &c*
Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following
pages, because I do not think figures, as chief subjects,
can be drawn to any good purpose by an amateur. As
accessaries in landscape, they are just to be drawn on the
same principles as anything else.
2. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF PERSPECTIVE.
When you begin to read this book, sit down very near
the window, and shut the window. I hope the view out of
it is pretty ; but, whatever the view may be, we shall find
enough in it for an illustration of the first principles of
perspective (or, literally, of "looking through").
Every pane of your window may be considered, if you
choose, as a glass picture ; and what you see through it,
as painted on its surface.
And if, holding your head still, you extend your hand
to the glass, you may, with a brush full of any thick
colour, trace, roughly, the lines of the landscape on the
glass.
But, to do this, you must hold your head very still.
ISTot only you must not move it sideways, nor up and
down, but it must not even move backwards or forwards ;
for, if you move your head forwards, you will see more
of the landscape through the pane ; and, if you move it
backwards, you will see less : or considering the pane of
glass as a picture, when you hold your head near it, the
* If the student is fond of architecture and wishes to know more of
perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Rouncirnan (of 49
Accacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing- master, and
to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and
rightly.
210
PERSPECTIVE.
objects are painted small, arid a great many of them go
into a little space ; but, when you hold your head some
distance back, the objects are painted larger upon the
pane, and fewer of them go into the field of it.
But, besides holding your head still, you must, when
you try to trace the picture on the glass, shut; one of your
eyes. If you do not, the point of the brush appears
double ; and, on farther experiment, you will observe
that each of your eyes sees the object in a different place
on the glass, so that the tracing which is true to the sight
of the right eye is a couple of inches (or more, according
to your distance from the pane), to the left of that which
is true to the sight of the left.
Thus, it is only possible to draw what you see through
the window rightly on the surface of the glass, by fixing
one eye at a given point, and neither moving it to the
right nor left, nor up nor down, nor backwards nor for-
wards. Every picture drawn in true perspective may be -
considered as an upright piece of glass,* on which the
objects seen through it have been thus drawn. Perspec-
tive can, therefore, only be cpiite right, by being calcu-
lated for one fixed position of the eye of the observer;
nor will it ever appear deceptively right unless seen pre-
cisely from the point it is calculated for. Custom, how-
ever, enables us to feel the rio4itness of the work on usino;
both our eyes, and to be satisfied with it, even when we
stand at some distance from the point it is designed for.
Supposing that, instead of a window, an unbroken
plate of crystal extended itself to the right and left of you,
and high in front, and that you had a brush as long as you
* If the glass were not upright, but sloping, the objects might still
be drawn through it, but their perspective would then be different.
Perspective, as commonly taught, is always calculated for a vertical
plane of picture.
PERSPECTIVE.
211
wanted (a mile long, suppose), and could paint with such a
brush, then the clouds high up, nearly over jour head, and
the landscape far away to the right and left, might be
traced, and painted, on this enormous crystal field.* But
if the field were so vast (suppose a mile high and a mile
wide), certainly, after the picture was done, you would not
stand as near to it, to see it, as you are now sitting near to
your window. In order to trace the upper clouds through
your great glass, you would have had to stretch your neck
quite back, and nobody likes to bend their neck back to
see the top of a picture. So you would walk a long way
back to see the great picture — a quarter of a mile, per-
haps,— and then all the perspective would be wrong, and
would look quite distorted, and you would discover that
you ought to have painted it from the greater distance, if
you meant to look at it from that distance. Thus, the
distance at which you intend the observer to stand from
a picture, and for which you calculate the perspective,
ought to regulate to a certain degree the size of the pic-
ture. If you place the point of observation near the
canvas, you should not make the picture very large : vice
versa, if you place the point of observation far from the
canvas, you should not make it very small ; the fixing,
therefore, of this point of observation determines, as a
matter of convenience, within certain limits, the size of
your picture. But it does not determine this size by any
perspective law ; and it is a mistake made by many
writers on perspective, to connect some of their rules
definitely with the size of the picture. F or, suppose that
you had what you now see through your window painted
actually upon its surface, it would be quite optional to
cut out any piece you chose, with the piece of the land-
* Supposing- it to have no thickness ; otherwise the images would be
distorted by refraction.
212
PERSPECTIVE.
scape that was painted on it. Ton might have only half
a pane, with a single tree; or a whole pane, with two
trees and a cottage ; or two panes, with the whole farm-
yard and pond ; or four panes, with farmyard, pond, and
foreground. And any of these pieces, if the landscape
upon them were, as a scene, pleasantly composed, would
be agreeable pictures, though of quite different sizes ; and
yet they would be all calculated for the same distance of
observation.
In the following treatise, therefore, I keep the size of
the picture entirely undetermined. I consider the field
of canvas as wholly unlimited, and on that condition de-
termine the perspective laws. After we know how to
apply those laws without limitation, we shall see what limi-
tations of the size of the picture their results may render
advisable.
But although the size of the picture is thus independ-
ent of the observer's distance, the size of the object repre-
sented in the picture is not. On the contrary, that size is
fixed by absolute mathematical law ; that is to say, sup-
posing you have to draw a tower a hundred feet high, and
a quarter of a mile distant from you, the height which you
ought to give that tower on your paper depends, with
mathematical precision, on the distance at which you in-
tend your paper to be placed. So, also, do all the rules
for drawing the form of the tower, whatever it may be.
Hence, the first thing to be done in beginning a draw-
ing is to fix, at your choice, this distance of observation,
or the distance at which you mean to stand from your
paper. After that is determined, all is determined, ex-
cept only the ultimate size of your picture, which you may
make greater, or less, not by altering the size of the things
represented, but by taking in more, or fewer of them.
So, then, before proceeding to apply any practical perspec-
tive rule, we must always have our distance of observa-
PERSPECTIVE.
213
tion marked, and the most convenient way of marking it is
the following :
3. PLACING OF THE SIGHT-POINT, SIGHT-LINE, STATION-POINT,
AND STATION- LINE.
a. The Sight-point. — Let a b c d, Fig. 1., be your sheet
of paper, the larger the better, though perhaps we may
cut out of it at last only a small piece for our picture,
such as the dotted circle nopq. This circle is not intended
to limit either the size or shape of our picture : you may
ultimately have it round or oval, horizontal or upright,
r N/' No
/' s \
...y'Q
T
1
c
II
D
Fig. 1.
small or large, as you choose. I only dot the line to give
you an idea of whereabouts you will probably like to
have it ; and, as the operations of perspective are more
conveniently performed upon paper underneath the picture
than above it, I put this conjectural circle at the top of
the paper, about the middle of it, leaving plenty of paper
on both sides and at the bottom. Now, as an observer
generally stands near the. middle of a picture to look at it,
we had better at first, and for simplicity's sake, fix the
214
PERSPECTIVE.
point of observation opposite the middle of our conjectural
picture. So take the point s, the centre of the circle n o
p q ; — or, which will be simpler for you in your own work,^
take the point s at random near the top of your paper, and
strike the circle nopq round it, any size you like. Then
the point s is to represent the point opposite which you
wish the observer of your picture to place his eye, in look-
ing at it. Call this point the " Sight-point."
b. The Sight-line. — Through the Sight-point, s, draw a
horizontal line, g- h, right across your paper from side to
side, and call this line the " Sight-line."
This line is of great practical use, representing the level
of the eye of the observer all through the picture. You
will find hereafter that if there is a horizon to be repre-
sented in your picture, as of distant sea or plain, this line
defines it. M. P., 334.
Rubens makes his horizon an oblique line. His object
is to carry the eye to a given point in the distance. The
road winds to it, the clouds fly at it, the trees nod to it, a
flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter points his whip
at it, his horses pull for it, the figures push for it, and the
horizon slopes towards it. If the horizon had been hori-
zontal, it would have embarrassed everything and every-
body.
c. The Station-line.— From s let fall a perpendicular
line, s e, to the bottom of the paper, and call this line the
" Station-line."
This represents the line on which the observer stands, at
a greater or less distance from the picture ; and it ought
to be imagined as drawn right out from the paper at the
point s. Hold your paper upright in front of you, and
hold your pencil horizontally, with its point against the
point s, as if you wanted to run it through the paper
there, and the pencil will represent the direction in which
PERSPECTIVE.
215
the line s k ouovht to be drawn. But as all the measure-
ments which we have to set upon this line, and operations
which we have to perform with it, are just the same when
it is drawn on the paper itself, below s, as they would be
if it were represented by a wire in the position of the
levelled pencil, and as they are much more easily per-
formed when it is drawn on the paper, it is always in
practice so drawn.
d. The Station-point. — On this line, mark the distance s
t at your pleasure, for the distance at which you wish your
picture to be seen, and call the point t the " Station-point/'
In practice, it is generally advisable to make the dis-
tance s t about as great as the diameter of your intended
picture ; and it should, for the most part, be more rather
than less ; but, as I have just stated, this is quite arbitrary.
However, in this figure, as an approximation to a gener-
ally advisable distance, I make the distance s t equal to
the diameter of the circle n o p q. Xow, having fixed
this distance, s t, all the dimensions of the objects in our
picture are fixed likewise, and for this reason : —
Q
p
P B
a'
H
s
T
E A
Fig. 2.
Let the upright line a b, Fig. 2., represent a pane of
glass placed where our picture is to be placed ; but seen
216
PEESPECTIVE.
at the side of it, edgeways ; let s be tlie Sight-point ; s t
the Station-line, which, in this figure, observe, is in its
true position, drawn out from the paper, not down upon
it ; and t the Station-point.
Suppose the Station-line s t to be continued, or in
mathematical language " produced," through s, far beyond
the pane of glass, and let p q be a tower or other upright
object situated on or above this line.
Now the apparent height of the tower p q is measured
by the angle qtp, between the rays of light which come
from the top and bottom of it to the eye of the observer.
But the actual height of the image of the tower on the
pane of glass a b, between us and it, is the distance p' q/
between the points where the rays traverse the glass.
Evidently, the farther from the point t we place the
glass, making s t longer, the larger will be the image ;
and the nearer we place it to t, the smaller the image,
and that in a fixed ratio. Let the distance d t be the
direct distance from the Station-point to the foot of the
object. Then, if we place the glass a b at one-third of
that whole distance, p' q' will be one-third of the real
height of the object; if we place the glass at two-thirds
of the distance, as at e f, p" q" (the height of the image
at that point) will be two-thirds the height* of the object,
and so on. Therefore the mathematical law is that p' q'
will be to p q as s t to d t. I put this ratio clearly by
itself that you may remember it :
p' q' : p q : : s t : d t
or in words :
p dash q dash is to p q as s t to d t
In which formula, recollect that p' q' is the height of
* I say "height" instead of "magnitude," for a reason stated in
Appendix I. , to which you will soon be referred. Read on here at
present.
PERSPECTIVE.
217
the appearance of the object on the picture ; p q the
height of the object itself; s the Sight-point; t the
Station-point; d a point at the direct distance of the
object ; though the object is seldom placed actually on
the line t s produced, and may be far to the right or left
of it, the formula is still the same.
For let s, Fig. 3., be the Sight-point, and a b the glass
— here seen looking down on its ujpjper edge, not side-
ways ; — then if the tower (represented now, as on a map,
by the dark square), instead of being at d on the line s t
produced, be at e, to the right (or left) of the spectator,
still the apparent height of the
tower on a b will be as s7 t to
e t, which is the same ratio as
that of s t to D T.
JMow in many perspective
problems, the position of an ob-
ject is more conveniently ex-
pressed by the two measure-
ments d t and d e, than by the
single oblique measurement e t.
I shall call d t the " direct
distance" of the object at e,
and d e its "lateral distance."
It is rather a license to call d t
its " direct " distance, for e t is
the more direct of the two ; but
there is no other term which would not cause confusion.
Lastly, in order to complete our knowledge of the
position of an object, the vertical height of some point in
it, above or below the eye, must be given ; that is to say,
either d p or n Q in Fig. 2 * : this I shall call the " vertical
Fig. 3.
* P and q being points indicative of the place of the tower's base and top.
In this figure both are above the sight-line ; if the tower were below the
spectator both would be below it, and therefore measured below D.
10
218
PERSPECTIVE.
distance " of. the point given. In all perspective prob-
lems these three distances and the dimensions of the
object, must be stated, otherwise the problem is imper-
fectly given. It ought not to be required of us merely
to draw a room or a church in perspective ; but to draw
this room from this corner, and that church on that spot,
in perspective. For want of knowing how to base their
drawings on the measurement and place of the object, I
have known practised students represent a parish church,
certainly in true perspective, but with a nave about two
miles and a half long.
It is true that in drawing landscapes from nature the
sizes and distances of the objects cannot be accurately
known. When, however, we know how to draw them
rightly, if their size were given, we have only to assume
a rational approximation to their size, and the resulting
drawing will be true enough for all intents and purposes.
It does not in the least matter that we represent a distant
cottage as eighteen feet long when it is in reality only
seventeen ; but it matters much that we do not represent
it as eighty feet long, as we easily might if we had not
been accustomed to draw from measurement. Therefore,
in all the following . problems the measurement of the
object is given.
The student must observe, however, that in order to bring
the diagrams into convenient compass, the measurements
assumed are generally very different from any likely to
occur in practice. Thus, in Fig. 3., the distance d s would
be probably in practice half a mile or a mile, and the dis-
tance t s, from the eye of the observer to the paper, only
two or three feet. The mathematical law is however pre-
cisely the same, whatever the proportions ; and I use such
proportions as are best calculated to make the diagram clear.
Now, therefore, the conditions of a perspective problem
are the following :
PERSPECTIVE.
219
The Sight-line a n given, Fig. 1.;
The Sight-point s given ;
The Station-point t given ; and
The three distances of the object,"* direct, lateral, and
vertical, with its dimensions given.
The size of the picture, conjecturally limited by the
dotted circle, is to be determined afterwards at our pleas-
ure. On these conditions I proceed at once to construc-
tion. Ele. Perspective.
4. THE GENERAL PLACING AND SCALE OF THE PICTURE.
As the horizontal sight-line is drawn through, the sight-
point, and the sight-point is opposite the eye, the sight-
line is always on a level with the eye. Above and below
the sight-line, the eye comprehends, as it is raised or de-
pressed while the head is held upright, about an equal
space ; and, on each side of the sight-point, about the same
space is easily seen without turning the head ; so that if a
picture represented the true field of easy vision, it ought
to be circular, and have the sight-point in its centre. But
because some parts of any given view are usually more
interesting than others, either the uninteresting parts are
left out, or somewhat more than would generally be seen
of the interesting parts is included, by moving the field
of the picture a little upwards or downwards, so as to throw
the sight-point low or high. The operation will be under-
stood in a moment by cutting an aperture in a piece of
pasteboard, and moving it up and down in front of the
eye, without moving the eye. It will be seen to embrace
sometimes the low, sometimes the high objects, without
altering their perspective, only the eye will be opposite
* More accurately, ' ' the three distances of any point, either in the
object itself, or indicative of its distance."
220
PERSPECTIVE.
the lower part of the aperture when it sees the higher ob-
jects, and vice versa.
. There is no reason, in the laws of perspective, why the
picture should not be moved to the right or left of the
sight-point, as well as up or down ; but there is this prac-
tical reason. The moment the spectator sees the hori-
zon in a picture high, he tries to hold his head high, that
is, in its right place. When he sees the horizon in a pic-
ture low, he similarly tries to put his head low. But, if
the sight-point is thrown to the left hand or right hand,
he does not understand that he is to step a little to the
right or left ; and if he places himself, as usual, in the
middle, all the perspective is distorted. Hence it is gene-
rally unadvisable to remove the sight-point laterally, from
the centre of the picture. The Dutch painters, however,
fearlessly take the license of placing it to the right or left ;
and often with good effect.
The rectilinear limitation of the sides, top, and base of
the picture is of course quite arbitrary, as the space of a
landscape would be which was seen through a window ;
less or more being seen at the spectator's pleasure, as he
retires or advances.
The distance of the station -point is not so arbitrary. In
ordinary cases it should not be less than the intended
greatest dimension (height, or breadth) of the picture. In
most works by the great masters it is more ; they not only
calculate on their pictures being seen at considerable dis-
tances, but they like breadth of mass in buildings, and dis-
like the sharp angles which always result from station-
points at short distances.*
* Tne greatest masters are also fond of parallel perspective, that is
to say, of having one side of their buildings fronting them full, and
therefore parallel to the picture plane, while the other side vanishes to
the side point. This is almost always done in figure backgrounds
securing simple and balanced lines.
PERSPECTIVE.
221
Whenever perspective, clone by true rule, looks wrong,
it is always because the station-point is too near. Deter-
mine, in the outset, at what distance the spectator is likely
to examine the work, and never use a station-point within
a less distance.
There is yet another and a very important reason, not
only for care in placing the station-point, but for that
accurate calculation of distance and observance of meas-
urement which have been insisted on throughout this
work. All drawings of objects on a reduced scale are, if
rightly executed, drawings of the appearance of the ob-
ject at the distance which in true perspective reduces it
to that scale. They are not small drawings of the object
seen near, but drawings the real size of the object seen far
off. Thus if you draw a mountain in a landscape, three
inches high, you do not reduce all the features of the
near mountain so as to come into three inches of paper.
You could not do that. All that you can do is to give the
appearance of the mountain, when it is so far off that
three inches of paper would really hide it from you. It is
precisely the same in drawing any other object. A face
can no more be reduced in scale than a mountain can.
It is infinitely delicate already; it can only be quite
rightly rendered on its own scale, or at least on the
slightly diminished scale which would be fixed by placing
the plate of glass, supposed* to represent the field of the
picture, close to the figures. Correggio and Raphael were
both fond of this slightly subdued magnitude of figure.
Colossal painting, in which Correggio excelled all others,
is usually the enlargement of a small picture (as a colossal
sculpture is of a small statue), in order to permit the sub-
ject of it to be discerned at a distance. The treatment of
colossal (as distinguished from ordinary) paintings will
depend therefore, in general, on the principles of optics
more than on those of perspective, though, occasionally,
222
PERSPECTIVE.
portions may be represented as if they were the pro-
jection of near objects on a plane behind them. In all
points the subject is one of great difficulty and subtlety;
and its examination does not fall within the compass of
this essay.
Lastly, it will follow from these considerations, and the
conclusion is one of great practical importance, that,
though pictures may be enlarged, they cannot be reduced,
in copying them. All attempts to engrave pictures com-
pletely on a reduced scale are, for this reason, nugatory.
The best that can be done is to give the aspect of the
picture at the distance which reduces it in perspective to
the size required ; or, in other words, to make a drawing
of the distant effect of the picture. Good painting, like
nature's own work, is infinite, and unreduceable.
CHAPTER II.
CLASSES OF LANDSCAPE.
1. "We may arrange nearly all existing landscape under
the following heads : —
I. Heroic. — Representing an imaginary world, inhabit-
ed by men not perhaps perfectly civilized, but noble, and
usually subjected to severe trials, and by spiritual powers
of the highest order. It is frequently without architecture ;
never without figure-action, or emotion. Its principal
master is Titian.
II. Classical. — Representing an imaginary world, in-
habited by perfectly civilized men, and by spiritual powers
of an inferior order.
It generally assumes this condition of things to have ex-
isted among the Greek and Roman nations. It contains
usually architecture of an elevated character, and always
incidents of figure-action and emotion. Its principal
master is Nicolo Poussin.
III. Pastoral. — Representing peasant life and its daily
work, or such scenery as may naturally be suggestive of
it, consisting usually of simple landscape, in part subjected
to agriculture, with figures, cattle, and domestic buildings.
No supernatural being is ever visibly present. It does not
in ordinary cases admit architecture of an elevated char-
acter, nor exciting incident. Its principal master is Cuyp.
IY. Contemplative. — Directed principally to the observ-
ance of the powers of Nature, and record of the historical
associations connected with landscape, illustrated by, or
contrasted with, existing states of human life. JSTo super-
natural being is visibly present. It admits every variety
224
CLASSES OF LANDSCAPE.
of subject, and requires, in general, figure incident, but not
of an exciting character. It was not developed completely
until recent times. Its principal master is Turner.*
2. These are the four true orders of landscape, not of
course distinctly separated from each other in all cases,
but very distinctly in typical examples. Two spurious
forms require separate note.
(a.) Picturesque. — This is indeed rather the degrada-
tion (or sometimes the undeveloped state) of the Contem-
plative, than a distinct class ; but it may be considered
generally as including pictures meant to display the skill
of the artist, and his powers of composition ; or to give
agreeable forms and colours, irrespective of sentiment. It
will include much modern art, with the street views and
church interiors of the Dutch, and the works of Canaletto,
Guardi, Tempesta, and the like.
(b.) Hybrid. — Landscape in which the painter endeav-
ours to unite their reconcilable sentiment of two or more
of the above-named classes. Its principal masters are
Berghem and Wouvermans.
Passing for the present by these inferior schools, we
find that all true landscape, whether simple or exalted,
depends primarily for its interest on connection with hu-
manity, or with spiritual powers. Banish your heroes and
nymphs from the classical landscape — its laurel shades
will move you no more. Show that the dark clefts of the
most romantic mountain are uninhabited and untraversed ;
* I have been embarrassed in assigning the names to these orders of
art, the term " Contemplative" belonging in justice nearly as much to
the romantic and pastoral conception as to the modern landscape. I in-
tended, originally, to call the four schools — Eomantic, Classic, Georgic,
and Theoretic — which would have been more accurate, and more con-
sistent with the nomenclature of the second volume ; but would not
have been pleasant in sound, nor, to the general reader, very clear in
sense.
CLASSES OF LANDSCAPE.
225
it will cease to be romantic. Fields without shepherds
and without fairies will have no gaiety in their green, nor
will the noblest masses of ground or colours of cloud arrest
or raise your thoughts, if the earth has no life to sustain,
and the heaven none to refresh.
3. It might perhaps be thought that, since from scenes in
which the figure was principal, and landscape symbolical
and subordinate (as in the art of Egypt), the process of
ages had led us to scenes in which landscape was principal
and the figure subordinate, — a continuance in the same
current of feeling might bring forth at last an art from
which humanity and its interests should wholly vanish,
leaving us to the passionless admiration of herbage and
stone. But this will not, and cannot be. For observe the
parallel instance in the gradually increasing importance of
dress. From the simplicity of Greek design, concentrat-
ing, I suppose, its skill chiefly on the naked form, the
course of time developed conditions of Venetian imagina- •
tion which found nearly as much interest, and expressed
nearly as much dignity, in folds of dress and fancies of
decoration as in the faces of the figures themselves ; so
that if from Veronese's Marriage in Cana we remove the
architecture and the gay dresses, we shall not in the faces
and hands remaining, find a satisfactory abstract of the
picture. But try it the other way. Take out the faces;
leave the draperies, and how then ? Put the fine dresses
and jewelled girdles into the best group you can ; paint
them with all Veronese's skill : will they satisfy you ?
4. Not so. As long as they are in their due service and
subjection — while their folds are formed by the motion of
men, and their lustre adorns the nobleness of men — so
long the lustre and the folds are lovely. But cast them
from the human limbs ; — golden circlet and silken tissue
are withered ; the dead leaves of autumn are more pre-
cious than thev.
10*
226
CLASSES OF LANDSCAPE.
This is just as true, but in a far deeper sense, of the
weaving of the natural robe of man's sou]. Fragrant tis- ,
sue of flowers, golden circlets of clouds, are only fair
when they meet the fondness of human thoughts, and
glorify human visions of heaven.
It is the leaning on this truth which, more than any
other, has been the distinctive character of all my own
past work. And in closing a series of Art-studies, pro-
longed during so many years, it may be perhaps permitted
me to point out this specialty — the rather that it has been,
of all their characters, the one most denied. I constantly
see that the same thing takes place in the estimation form-
ed by the modern public of the work of almost any true
person, living or dead. It is not needful to state here the
causes of such error : but the fact is indeed so, that pre-
cisely the distinctive root and leading force of any true
man's work and way are the things denied concerning him.
And in these books of mine, their distinctive character,
as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in
human passion or human hope. Arising first not in any
desire to explain the principles of art, but in the endeavour
to defend an individual painter from injustice, they have
been coloured throughout, — nay, continually altered in
shape, and even warped and broken, by digressions re-
specting social questions, which had for me an interest
tenfold greater than the work I had been forced into un-
dertaking. Every principle of painting which I have
stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact ; and in my
works on architecture the preference accorded finally to
one school over another, is founded on a comparison of their
influences on the life of the workman — a question by all
other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgot-
ten or despised.
The essential connection of the power of landscape with
human emotion is not less certain, because in many im-
CLASSES OF LANDSCAPE.
227
pfessive pictures the link is slight or local. That the con-
nection should exist at a single point is all that we need.
The comparison with the dress of the body may be carried
out into the extremest parallelism. It may often happen
that no part of the figure wearing the dress is discernible,
nevertheless, the perceivable fact that the drapery is worn
by a fio'ure makes all the difference. In one of the most
sublime figures in the world this is actually so: one of
the fainting Marys in Tintoret's Crucifixion has cast her
mantle over her head, and her face is lost in its shade,
and her whole figure veiled in folds of orey. But what
the difference is between that grey woof, that gathers
round her as she falls, and the same folds cast in a heap
upon the ground, that difference, and more, exists between
the power of In ature through which humanity is seen, and
her power in the desert. Desert — whether of leaf or sand
— true clesertness is not in the want of leaves, but of life.
Where humanity is not, and was not, the best natural
beauty is more than vain. It is even terrible ; not as the
dress cast aside from the body; but as an embroidered
shroud hiding a skeleton.
5. And on each side of a lwht feeling in this matter
there lie, as usual, two opposite errors.
The first, that of caring for man only ; and for the rest
of the universe, little, or not at all, which, in a measure,
was the error of the Greeks and Florentines ; the other,
that of caring for the universe only ; for man, not at all,
— which, in a measure, is the error of modern science,
and of the Art connecting itself with such science.
The degree of power which any man may ultimately
possess in landscape-painting will depend finally on his
perception of this influence. If he has to paint the des-
ert, its awfulness — if the garden, its gladsomeness — will
arise simply and only from this sensibility to the story of
life. Without this he is nothing but a scientific median-
228
CLASSES OF LANDSCAPE.
ist ; this, though it cannot make him yet a painter, raises
him to the sphere in which he may become one. Nay, the
mere shadow and semblance of this have given dangerous
power to works in all other respects unnoticeable ; and the
least degree of its true presence has given value to work in
all other respects vain. The true presence, observe, of sym-
pathy with the spirit of man. Where this is not, sympa-
thy with any higher spirit is impossible.
5 M. P., 205-210.
J
CHAPTER III.
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
§ 1. The reader has probably been surprised at my as-
sertions made often before now, and reiterated here, that
the minutest portion of a great composition is helpful to
the whole. It certainly does not seem easily conceivable
that this should be so. I will go farther, and say that it is
inconceivable. But it is the fact.
We shall discern it to be so by taking one or two com-
positions to pieces, and examining the fragments. In
doing which, we must remember that a great composition
always has a leading emotional purpose, technically called
its motive, to which all its lines and forms have some re-
lation. Undulating lines, for instance, are expressive of
action ; and would be false in effect if the motive of the
picture was one of repose. Horizontal and angular lines
are expressive of rest and strength ; and would destroy a
design whose purpose was to express disquiet and feeble-
ness. It is therefore necessary to ascertain the motive be-
fore descending to the detail.
§ 2. One of the simplest subjects, in the series of the
Rivers of France, is "Rietz, near Saumur." The pub-
lished Plate gives a better rendering than usual of its tone
of light; and my rough etching, Plate 5, sufficiently
shows the arrangement of its lines. What is their
motive ?
To get at it completely, we must know something of the
Loire.
The district through which it here flows is, for the most
230
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
part, a low place, yet not altogether at the level of the
stream, but cut into steep banks of chalk or gravel, thirty
or forty feet high, running for miles at about an equal
height above the water.
These banks are excavated by the peasantry, partly for
houses, partly for cellars, so economizing vineyard space
above ; and thus a kind of continuous village runs along
the river-side, composed half of caves, half of rude build-
ings, backed by the cliff, propped against it, therefore
always leaning away from the river ; mingled with over-
lappings of vineyard trellis from above, and little towers or
summer-houses for outlook, when the grapes are ripe, or
for gossip over the garden wall.
§ 3. It is an autumnal evening, then, by this Loire side.
The day has been hot, and the air is heavy and misty still ;
the sunlight warm, but dim ; the brown vine-leaves mo-
tionless : all else quiet. 'Not a sail in sight on the river,*
its strong, noiseless current lengthening the stream of low
sunlight.
The motive of the picture, therefore, is the expression
of rude but perfect peace, slightly mingled with an indo-
lent languor and despondency ; the peace between inter-
vals of enforced labour ; happy, but listless, and having
little care or hope about the future ; cutting its home out
of this gravel bank, and letting the vine and the river
twine and undermine as they will ; careless to mend or
build, so long as the walls hold together, and the black
fruit swells in the sunshine.
§ 4. To get this repose, together with rude stability, we
have therefore horizontal lines and bold angles. The
grand horizontal space and sweep of Turner's distant
river show perhaps better in the etching than in the
* The sails in the engraving- were put in to catch the public eye.
There are none in the drawing.
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
231
Plate ; "but depend wholly for value on the piece of near
wall. It is the vertical line of its dark side which drives
the eye up into the distance, right against the horizontal,
and so makes it felt, while the flatness of the stone pre-
pares the eye to understand the flatness of the river. Far-
ther : hide with your finger the little ring on that stone,
and you will find the river has stopped flowing. That ring
is to repeat the curved lines of the river bank, which ex-
press its line of current, and to bring the feeling of them
down near us. On the other side of the road the horizon-
tal lines are taken up again by the dark pieces of wood,
without which we should still lose half our space.
Next : The repose is to be not only perfect, but indo-
lent : the repose of out-wearied people : not caring much
what becomes of them.
You see the road is covered with litter. Even the
crockery is left outside the cottage to dry in the sun, after
being washed up. The steps of the cottage door have been
too high for comfort originally, only it was less trouble to
cut three large stones than four or five small. They are
now all aslope and broken, not repaired for years. Their
weighty forms increase the sense of languor throughout the
scene, and of stability also, because we feel how difficult
it would be to stir them. The crockery has its work to do
also ; — the arched door on the left being necessary to show
the great thickness of walls and the strength they require
to prevent falling in of the cliff above ; — as the horizontal
lines must be diffused on the right, so this arch must be
diffused on the left ; and the large round plate on one
side of the steps, with the two small ones on the other, are
to carry down the element of circular curvature. Hide
them, and see the result.
As they carry the arched group of forms down, the
arched window-shutter diffuses it upward, where all the
lines of the distant buildings suggest one and the same
232
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
idea of disorderly and careless strength, mingling masonry
with rock.
§ 5. So far of the horizontal and curved lines. How
of the radiating ones ? What has the black vine trellis
got to do %
Lay a pencil or ruler parallel with its lines. You will
find that they point to the massive building in the dis-
tance. To which, as nearly as is possible without at once
showing the artifice, every other radiating line points
also ; almost ludicrously when it is once pointed out ;
even the curved line of the top of the terrace runs into it,
and the last sweep of the river evidently leads to its base.
And so nearly is it in the exact centre of the picture,
that one diagonal from corner to corner passes through it,
and the other only misses the base by the twentieth of
an inch.
If you are accustomed to France, you will know in a
moment by its outline that this massive building is an old
church.
Without it, the repose would not have been essentially
the laborer's rest — rest as of the Sabbath. Among all the
groups of lines that point to it, two are principal: the
first, those of the vine trellis : the second, those of the
handles of the saw left in the beam : — the blessing of
human life, and its labor.
Whenever Turner wishes to express profound repose,
he puts in the foreground some instrument of labor cast
aside. See, in Rogers's Poems, the last vignette, " Datur
bora quieti," with the plough in the furrow ; and in the
first vignette of the same book, the scythe on the shoulder
of the peasant going home. (There is nothing about the
scythe in the passage of the poem which this vignette
illustrates.)
§ 6. Observe, farther, the outline of the church itself.
As our habitations are, so is our church, evidently a
6 . The Millstream.
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
233
heap of old, but massive, walls, patched, and repaired, and
roofed in, and over and over, until its original shape is hard-
ly recognizable. I know the kind of church well — can tell
even here, two miles off, that I shall find some Norman
arches in the apse, and a flamboyant porch, rich and dark,
with every statue broken out of it ; and a rude wooden
belfry above all ; and a quantity of miserable shops built
in among the buttresses ; and that I may walk in and out
as much as I please, but that how often soever, I shall al-
ways find some one praying at the Holy Sepulchre, in the
darkest aisle, and mv o>oino; in and out will not disturb
them. For they are praying, which in many a hand-
somer and highlier-furbished edifice might, perhaps, not
be so assuredly the case.
§ 7. Lastly : \Vhat kind of people have we on this
winding road ? Three indolent ones, leaning on the wall
to look over into the gliding water ; and a matron with
her market panniers, by her figure, not a fast rider. The
road, besides, is bad, and seems unsafe for trotting, and
she has passed, without disturbing the cat, who sits com-
fortably on the block of wood in the middle of it.
| 3. Next to this piece of quietness, let us glance at a
composition in which the motive is one of tumult : that of
the Fall of Schaffhausen. It is engraved in the Keep-
sake. I have etched in Plate 6, at the top, the chief
lines of its composition,* in which the first great purpose
is to give swing enough to the water. The line of fall is
* These etchings of compositions are all reversed, for they are merely
sketches on the steel, and I cannot sketch easily except straight from
the drawing-, and without reversing-. The looking-glass plagues me
with cross lights. As examples of composition, it does not the least
matter which way they are turned ; and the reader may see this Schaff-
hausen subject from the right side of the Rhine, by holding the book
before a glass. The rude indications of the figures in the Loire subject
are nearly facsimiles of Turner's.
234:
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
straight and monotonous in reality. Turner wants to get
the great concave sweep and rush of the river well felt, in
spite of the unbroken form. The column of spray, rocks,
mills, and bank, all radiate like a plume, sweeping round
together in grand curves to the left, where the group of
figures, hurried about the ferry-boat, rises like-a-dash of
spray ; they also radiating : so as to form one perfectly
connected cluster, with the two gens-d'armes and the mill-
stones ; the millstones at the bottom being the root of it ;
the two soldiers laid right and left to sustain the branch
of figures beyond, balanced just as a tree bough would be.
§ 9. One of the gens-d'armes is flirting with a young
lady in a round cap and full sleeves, under pretence of
wanting her to show him what she has in her bandbox.
The motive of which flirtation is, so far as Turner is con-
cerned in it, primarily the bandbox : this and the mill-
stones below, give him a series of concave lines, which,
concentrated by the recumbent soldiers, intensify the hol-
low sweep of the fall, precisely as the ring on the stone
does the Loire eddies. These curves are carried out on
the right by the small plate of eggs, laid to be washed at
the spring ; and, all these concave lines being a little too
quiet and recumbent, the staggering casks are set ~ on the
left, and the ill-balanced milk-pail on the right, to give
a general feeling of things being rolled over and over.
The things which are to give this sense of rolling are
dark, in order to hint at the way in which the cataract
rolls boulders of rock ; while the forms which are to give
the sense of its sweeping force are white. The little
spring, splashing out of its pine-trough, is to give contrast
with the power of the fall, — while it carries out the gene-
ral sense of splashing water.
§ 10. This spring exists on the spot, and so does every-
thing else in the picture ; but the combinations are wholly
arbitrary ; it being Turner's fixed principle to collect out
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
235
of any scene, whatever was characteristic, and put it to-
gether just as he liked. The changes made in this in-
stance are highly curious. The mills have no resemblance
whatever to the real group as seen from this spot ; for
there is a vulgar and formal dwelling-house in front of
them. But if you climb the rock behind them, you find
they form on that side a towering cluster, which Turner
has put with little modification into the drawing. TThat
he has done to the mills, he has done with still greater
audacity to the central rock. Seen from this spot, it
shows, in reality, its greatest breadth, and is heavy and
uninteresting ; but on the Lauffen side, exposes its con-
sumed base, worn away by the rush of water, which Tur-
ner resolving to show, serenely draws the rock as it ap-
pears from the other side of the Rhine, and brings that
view of it over to this side. I have etched the bit with
the rock a little larger below ; and if the reader knows
the spot, he will see that this piece of the drawing, re-
versed in the etching, is almost a bona fide unreversed
study of the fall from the Lauffen side.*
Finally, the castle of Lauffen itself, being, when seen
from this spot, too much foreshortened to show its extent,
Turner walks a quarter of a mile lower clown the river,
draws the castle accurately there, brings it back with him,
and puts it in all its extent, where he chooses to have it,
beyond the rocks.
I tried to copy and engrave this piece of the drawing of
its real size, merely to show the forms of the trees, drifted
back by the breeze from the fall, and wet with its spray ;
but in the endeavour to facsimile the touches, great part of
their grace and ease has been lost ; still, Plate 7 may, if
* With the exception of the jagged ledge rising out of the foam be-
low, which comes from the north side, and is admirable in its expression
of the position of the limestone-beds, wbich, rising from below the drift
gravel of Constance, are the real cause of the fall of Schaffhausen.
230
THE MOTIVE OP LANDSCAPE.
compared with the same piece in the Keepsake engraving,
at least show that the original drawing has not yet been
rendered with completeness.
§11. These two examples may sufficiently serve to show
the mode in which minor details, both in form and spirit,
are used by Turner to aid his main motives ; of course I
cannot, in the space of this volume, go on examining sub-
jects at this length, even if I had time to etch them; but
every design of Turner's would be equally instructive,
examined in a similar manner. Thus far, however, we
have only seen the help of the parts to the whole : we
must give yet a little attention to the mode of combining
the smallest details.
I am always led away, in spite of myself, from my
proper subject here, invention formal, or the merely
pleasant placing of lines and masses, into the emotional
results of such arrangement. The chief reason of this is
that the emotional power can be explained ; but the per-
fection of formative arrangement, as I said, cannot be ex-
plained, any more than that of melody in music. An
instance or two of it, however, may be given.
The Form and Group.
(See Chapter on Grouping.)
§ 12. Much fine formative arrangement depends on a
more or less elliptical or pear-shaped balance of the
group, obtained by arranging the principal members of it
on two opposite curves, and either centralizing it by some
powerful feature at the base, centre, or summit ; or else
clasping it together by some conspicuous point or knot. A
very small object will often do this satisfactorily.
If you can get the complete series of Lefebre's engrav-
ings from Titian and Veronese, they will be quite enough
to teach you, in their dumb way, everything that is teach-
able of composition ; at all events, try to get the Madonna,
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
237
with St. Peter and St. George under the two great pillars;
the Madonna and Child, with mitred bishop on her left,
and St. Andrew on her right ; and Veronese's Triumph of
Venice. The first of these Plates unites two formative
symmetries ; that of the two pillars, clasped by the square
altar-cloth below and cloud above, catches the eye first ;
but the main group is the fivefold one rising to the left,
crowned by the Madonna. St. Francis and St. Peter form
its two wings, and the kneeling portrait figures, its base.
It is clasped at the bottom by the key of St. Peter, which
points straight at the Madonna's head, and is laid on the
steps solely for this purpose ; the curved lines, which en-
close the group, meet also in her face ; and the straight
line of light, on the cloak of the nearest senator, points at
her also. If you have Turner's Liber Studiorum, turn to
the Lauffenburg, and compare the figure group there : a
fivefold chain, one standing figure, central ; two recum-
bent, for wings; two half -recumbent, for bases; and a
cluster of weeds to clasp. Then turn to Lefebre's Europa
(there are two in the series — I mean the one with the two
tree trunks over her head)! It is a wonderful ninefold
group. Europa central ; two stooping figures, each sur-
mounted by a standing one, for wings; a cupid on one side,
and dog on the other, for bases; a cupid and trunk of tree,
on each side, to terminate above ; and a garland for clasp.
§ 13. Fig. 4, page 238, will serve to show the mode in
which similar arrangements are carried into the smallest
detail. It is magnified four times from a cluster of leaves
in the foreground of the " Isis " (Liber Studiorum). Figs.
5 and 6, page 230, show the arrangement of the two
groups composing it ; the lower is purely symmetrical,
with tref oiled centre and broad masses for wincrs : the
uppermost is a sweeping continuous curve, symmetrical,
but foreshortened. Both are clasped by arrow-shaped
leaves. The two whole groups themselves are. in turn,
238
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
members of another larger group, composing the entire
foreground, and consisting of broad dock-leaves, with minor
clusters on the right and left, of which these form the chief
portion on the right side.
Fig. 4.
§ 14c. Unless every leaf, and every visible point or
object, however small, forms a part of some harmony of
this kind (these symmetrical conditions being only the most
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. 239
simple and obvious), it has no business in the picture. It is
the necessary connection of all the forms and colors, down
Fig. 6.
to the last touch, which constitutes great or inventive work,
separated from all common work by a.n impassable gulf.
240
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
By diligently copying the etchings of the Liber Studi-
orum, the reader may, however, easily attain the percep-
tion of the existence of these relations, and be prepared to
understand Turner's more elaborate composition. It
would take many figures to disentangle and explain the
arrangements merely of the leaf cluster, Fig. 78, facing
page 104; but that there is a system, and that every leaf
has a fixed value and place in it, can hardly but be felt at
a glance.
It is curious that, in spite of all the constant talking of
" composition " which goes on among art students, true
composition is just the last thing which appears to be per-
ceived. One would have thought that in this group, at
least the value of the central black leaf would have been
seen, of which the principal function is to point towards,
and continue, the line of bank above. See Plate 62. But
a glance at the published Plate in the England series will
show that no idea of the composition had occurred to the
engraver's mind. He thought any leaves would do, and
supplied them from his own repertory of hack vegetation.
§ 15. I would willingly enlarge farther on this subject
■ — it is a favorite one with me ; but the figures recpiired
for any exhaustive treatment of it would form a separate
volume. All that I can do is to indicate, as these ex-
amples do sufficiently, the vast field open to the student's
analysis if he cares to pursue the subject; and to mark for
the general reader these two strong conclusions: — that
nothing in great work is ever either fortuitous or conten-
tious.
It is not fortuitous ; that is to say, not left to fortune.
The " must do it by a kind of felicity " of Bacon is true ;
it is true also that an accident is often suggestive to an
inventor. Turner himself said, " I never lose an accident."
But it is this not losing it, this taking things out of the
hands of Fortune, and putting them into those of force
THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE.
241
and foresight, which attest the master. Chance may
sometimes help, and sometimes provoke, a success ; but
must never rule, and rarely allure.
And, lastly, nothing must be contentions. Art has many
uses and many pleasantnesses ; but of all its services, none
are hio;her than its setting forth, bv a visible and enduring
image, the nature of all true authority and freedom ; —
Authority which defines and directs the action of benevo-
lent law ; and Freedom which consists in deep and soft
consent of individual* helpfulness. 5 M. P., 175.
* "Individual," that is to say, distinct and separate in character,
though joined in purpose. I might have enlarged on this head, but that
all I should care to say has been already said admirably by Mr. J. S.
Mill in his Essay on Liberty.
11
CHAPTEE IT.
SKETCHING FROM NATURE.
1 assume that you are now enabled to draw with fair
success, either rounded and simple masses, like stones, or
complicated arrangements of form, like those of leaves ;
provided only these masses or complexities will stay quiet
for you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great
as to baffle your patience. But if we are, now to go out to
the fields, and to draw anything like a complete landscape,
neither of these conditions will any more be observed for
us. The clouds will not wait while we copy their heaps or
clefts ; the shadows will escape from us as we try to shape
them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light
where its tremulous edge had rested the moment before,
and involving in eclipse objects that had seemed safe from
its influence ; and instead of the small clusters of leaves
which we could reckon point by point, embarrassing
enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as
little to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless,
perhaps, as its foam.
In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imita-
tion becomes more or less impossible. It is always to be
aimed at so far as it is possible ; and when you have time
and opportunity, some portions of a landscape may, as
you gain greater skill, be rendered with an approximation
almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you
may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose,
and of speed to seize, certain things that are principal or
fugitive ; and you must give more and more effort daily
SKETCHING.
243
to the observance of characteristic points, and the attain-
ment of concise methods.
1. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two
reasons. First, that it is always accessible as a study ;
and secondly, that its modes of growth present simple ex-
amples of the importance of leading or governing lines. It
is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot seize all,
that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and grace
and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural
form. I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are
always expressive of the past history and present action of
the thing. They show in a mountain, first, how it was
built or heaped up ; and secondly, how it is now being
worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike
it. In a tree they show what kind of fortune it has had
to endure from its childhood ; how troublesome trees have
come in its way, and pushed it aside, and tried to strangle
or starve it ; where and when kind trees have sheltered
it ; and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it
bent ; what winds torment it most ; what boughs of it be-
have best, and bear most fruit ; and so on. In a wave or
cloud, these leading lines show the run of the tide and of
the wind, and the sort of change which the water or va-
pour is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets
shore, or counterwave, or melting sunshine. ISTow remem-
ber, nothing distinguishes great men from inferior men
more than their always, whether in life or in art, know-
ing the way things are going. Your dunce thinks they
are standing still, and draws them all fixed ; your wise
man sees the change or changing in them, and draws
them so — the animal in its motion, the tree in its growth,
the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away.
Try always whenever you look at a form, to see the lines
in it which have had power over its past fate, and will
have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines ;
244
SKETCHING.
see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus,
the leafage in Fig. 16. (p. 89.) grew round the root of a
stone pine, on the- brow of a crag at Sestri, near Genoa,
and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their first bud-
ding by the great rude root, and spring out in every di-
rection round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is
thrown into it. Then, when they have got clear of the
root, they begin to bend up again ; some of them, being
little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of grow-
ing upright, if they can ; and this struggle of theirs to re-
cover their straight road towards the sky, after being
obliged to grow sideways in their early years, is the effort
that will mainly influence their future destiny, and deter-
mine if they are to be crabbed, forky pines, striking from
that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them, with bared
red lightning of angry arms towards the sea ; or if they
are to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars
of temples, and the purple burning of their branches
sheathed in deep globes of cloudy green. Those, then,
are their fateful lines ; see that you give that spring and
resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it,
their chief beauty is in these.
2. So in trees in general and bushes, large or small, you
will notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and
at various angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less
and less as they near the top of the tree. This structure,
typified in the simplest possible terms at c, Fig. 7., is
common to all trees that I know of, and it gives them
a certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the
hearts of their branches, which are essential to their
beauty. The stem does not merely send off a wild branch
here and there to take its own way, but all the branches
share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve
and a path to take which fills a definite place, and each
terminates all its minor branches at its outer extremity,
SKETCHING.
245
so as to form a great outer curve, whose character and
proportion are peculiar for each species ; that is to say,
the general type or idea of a tree is not as Fig. 7., but
ah c
Fig. 7.
as h, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor
divisions right out to the bounding curve ; not bat that
smaller branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart of
the tree, but the idea and main purpose in every branch
are to carry all its child branches well out to the air and
light, and let each of them, however small, take its part in
filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the
type of each separate bough is again not a, but Fig. 8. ;
Fig. 8.
approximating, that is to say, so far to the structure of a
plant of broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and
leafage out to a rounded surface ; therefore, beware of
getting into a careless habit of drawing boughs with suc-
cessive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging to the
other, as in Fig. 9. If you look at the tree-boughs in
any painting of Wilson's, you will see this structure, and
nearly every other that is to be avoided, in their intensest
246 SKETCHING.
types. You will also notice that Wilson never conceives
a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it had been pressed
and dried. Most people, in drawing pines, seem to fancy,
in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two
Fig. 9.
sides of the trunk, instead of all round it ; always, there-
fore, take more pains in trying to draw the boughs of
trees that grow towards you, than those that go off to
the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the fore-
shortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in draw-
ing them to observe that in most trees the ramification of
each branch, though not of the tree itself, is more or less
flattened, and approximates, in its position, to the look of
a hand held out to receive something, or shelter some-
thing. If vou take a looking-glass, and hold vour hand
before it slightly hollowed, with the palm upwards, and
the fingers open, as if you were going to support the base
of some great bowl, larger than you could easily hold, and
sketch your hand as you see it in the glass, with the
points of the fingers towards you, it will materially help
you in understanding the way trees generally hold out
their hands ; and if then you will turn yours with its
palm downwards, as if you were going to try to hide
something, but with the fingers expanded, you will get a
good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and
such other spreading trees.
Fig. 10. will give you a good idea of the simplest way
in which these and other such facts can be rapidly ex-
pressed ; if you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to
SKETCHING.
247
Fig. 10.
248
SKETCHING.
find how the touches all group together, in expressing the
plumy toss of the tree branches, and the springing of the
bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the ground :
note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the
climbers of the little mound on the left.* It is facsimiled
from an etching of Turner's, and is as good an example as
you can have of the use of pure and firm lines; it will
also show you how the particular action in foliage, or any-
thing else to which you wish to direct attention, may be
intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees
are made to look more tall and upright still, because their
line is continued below by the figure of the farmer with
his stick ; and the rounded bushes on the bank are made
to look more rounded, because their line is continued in
one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing
the wall. These figures are placed entirely with this ob-
ject, as we shall see more fully hereafter when we come
to talk about composition ; but, if you please, we will not
talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing
to do with composition, but only with fact, and the brief
and expressive representation of fact. But there will be
no harm in your looking forward, if you like to do so, to the
account, in Letter III. of the " Law of Radiation," and
reading what is said there about tree growth : indeed it
would in some respects have been better to have said it
here than there, only it would have broken up the account
of the principles of composition somewhat awkwardly.
3. ow, although the lines indicative of action are not
always quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little
attention will soon enable you to see that there are such
lines in everything. In an old house roof, a bad observer
and bad draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty
* It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."
SKETCHING.
249
irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good draughts-
man will see all the bends of the under timbers, where
they are weakest and the weight is telling on them most,
and the tracks of the run of the water in time of rain,
where it runs off fastest, and where it lies long and feeds
the moss ; and he will be careful, however few slates he
draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those
hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them),
and crowd gradually together at the top of the gable,
partly diminishing in perspective, partly, perhaps, dimin-
ished on purpose (they are so in most English old houses)
by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always the di-
rection of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds
the earth and cuts it into hollows ; and, generally, in any
bank, or height worth drawing, a trace of bedded or other
internal structure besides. The figure 10. will give you
some idea of the way in which such facts may be expressed
by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the
ground all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how
the people always turn to the left at the top, losing breath
a little, and then how the water runs down in that other
hollow towards the valley, behind the roots of the
trees ?
Xow, I want you in your first sketches from nature to
aim exclusively at understanding and representing these
vital facts of form ; using the pen — not now the steel, but
the quill — firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but
saying to yourself before you lay on a single touch, —
" That leaf is the main one, that bough is the guiding one,
and this touch, so long, so broad, means that part of it," —
point or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always,
as you look at the thing, what you will take, and what
miss of it, and never let your hand run away with you, or
get into any habit or method of touch. If you want a
continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from one
11*
250
SKETCHING.
end of it to the other, without a tremor ; if you want a
shaking and broken line, your hand should shake, or break
off, as easily as a musician's finger shakes or stops on a
note : only remember this, that there is no general way of
doing any thing ; no recipe can be given you for so much
as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be
ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing ; sunburnt and
sheep-bitten, or rank and languid ; fresh or dry ; lustrous
or dull : look at it, and try to draw it as it is, and don't
think how somebody " told you to do grass." So a stone
may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all
over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as
the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as
powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like a
ship's hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like
a Damascus sabre, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystal-
lised like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf : look at it,
and don't try to remember how anybody told you to " do
a stone."
4. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thorough-
ly, and that you can render any form with a firmness and
truth approaching that of Turner's or Durer's work,* you
must add a simple but equally careful light and shade to
your pen drawing, so as to make each study as complete
as possible: for which you must prepare yourself thus.
Get, if you have the means, a good impression of one plate
of Turner's Liber Studiorum ; if possible, one of the
subjects named in the note below, f If you cannot obtain,
* I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer in their
strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But
you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner,
f The following are the most desirable plates :
Grande Chartreuse. Pembury Mill.
.ZEsacus and Hesperie. Little Devil's Bridge.
Cephalus and Procris. River Wye {not Wye and Severn).
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251
or even borrow for a little while, any of these engravings,
you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell you
presently) ; but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best.
You will see that it is composed of a firm etching in line,
with mezzotint shadow laid over it. You must first copy
the etched part of it accurately ; to which end put the
print against the window, and trace slowly with the greatest
care every black line ; retrace this on smooth drawing-paper ;
and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at
the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may
be on the right side, not making a line which is too curved
or too straight already in the tracing, more curved or more
straight, as you go over it. And in doing this, never work
after you are* tired, nor to " get the thing done," for if it
Source of Arveron. Holy Island.
Ben Arthur. Clyde.
Watermill. Lauffenbourg.
Hindhead Hill. Blair Athol.
Hedging and Ditching. Alps from G-renoble.
Dumblane Abbey. Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook,
Morpeth. trees, and castle on the right. )
Calais Pier.
If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable,
except only the twelve following, which are quite useless :
1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.
2. Interior of church.
3. Scene with bridge, and trees above ; figures on left, one playing
a pipe .
4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.
5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church
seen through them.
6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.
7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.
8. Rivaulx Abbey.
9. Wye and Severn.
10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on the left.
11. Martello Towers.
12. Calm.
It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original
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SKETCHING.
is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true zeal
and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the
sulky and inattentive labour . of a whole day. If you have
not made the touches right at the first going over with the
pen, retouch them delicately, with little ink in your pen,
thickening or reinforcing them as they need : you cannot
give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this
etched outline by you, in order to study at your ease the
way in which Turner uses his line as preparatory for the
subsequent shadow ; * it is only in getting the two separate
that you will be able to reason on this. Next, copy once
more, though for the fourth time, any part of this etching
which you like, and put on the light and shade with the
brush, and any brown colour that matches* that of the
etching's ; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone, for
it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a
very careful one : only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and
Durnblane were not etched by Turner ; and the etchings of those three
are not good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see
how Turner, apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in
the Arveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either con-
quered or brought into use the bad etching by his marvellous engraving.
The Durnblane was, however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beauti-
fully engraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct
with a stork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series ;
and next to it, are the unpublished etchings of .the Via Mala and
Crowhurst. Turner seems to have been so fond of these plates that he
kept retouching and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let
them go. The Via Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left
it, the finest of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after
that of the aqueduct. Figure 10., above, is part of another fine un-
published etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." .Of the published
etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, iEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone
Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern ; the three latter are the more
generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are also
very desirable.
* You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding's
tree-drawing, a little farther on.
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253
plate;* working it with the point of the brush as deli-
cately as if you were drawing with pencil, and dotting and
cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the paper, till
you get the gradations of Turner's engraving. In this
exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked
to close resemblance of the copy is worth more than the
whole subject carelessly done. Xot that in drawing after-
wards from nature, you are to be obliged to finish every
gradation in this way, but that, once having fully accom-
plished the drawing something rightly, you will thence-
forward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you
could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey
you, and bring out quickly and clearly the loveliest results,
with a submissiveness which it would have wholly refused
if you had not put it to severest work, xsothing is more
strange in art than the way that chance and materials seem
to favour you, when once you have thoroughly conquered
them. Make yourself quite independent of chance, get
your result in spite of it, and from that day forward all
things will somehow fall as you would have them. Show
the camel's-hair, and the colour in it, that no bending nor
blotting are of any use to escape your will ; that the touch
and the shade shall finally be right, if it cost you a year's
toil; and from that hour of corrective conviction, said
camel's-hair will bend itself to all your wishes, and no blot
will dare to transgress its appointed border. If you cannot
obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a photographf
of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a
village, or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and
some calm water of varied character (a stream with stones
in it, if possible), and copy any part of it you like, in this
* The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown can be
specified.
f You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a
Liber print as well.
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SKETCHING.
same brown colour, working, as I have just directed you
to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of the
brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, how-
ever ; first, there are portions in every photograph too deli-
cately done for you at present to be at all able to copy ;
and secondly, there are portions always more obscure or
dark than there would be in the real scene, and involved
in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher.
Both these characters will be advantageous to you for
future study, after you have gained experience, but they
are a little against you in early attempts at tinting ; still,
you must fight through the difficulty, and get the power of
producing delicate gradations with brown or grey, like
those of the photograph.
5. Now observe ; the perfection of work would be tinted
shadow, like photography, without any obscurity or exag-
gerated darkness ; and as long as your effect depends in
anywise on visible lines, your art is not perfect, though
it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete re-
sults in tints merely, requires both long time and consum-
mate skill; and you will find that a few well-put pen
lines, with a tint dashed over or under them, get more ex-
pression of facts than you could reach in any other way,
by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber
Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the
simplest shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet
capable of dealing with the most subtle natural effects ;
for the firm etching gets at the expression of complicated
details as leaves, masonry, textures of ground, &c, while
the overlaid tint enables you to express the most tender
distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist or
cloud. Most of the best drawings by the old masters are
executed on this principle, the touches of the pen being
useful, also to give a look of transparency to shadows, which
could not otherwise be attained but by great finish of
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255
tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good
public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers
who have folios either of old drawings, or facsimiles of
them, you will not be at a loss to find some example of
this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photo-
graphs also are now taken from the best drawings by the
old masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes,
and other societies organized with a view to public in-
struction, will not fail to possess themselves of examples
of these, and to make them accessible to students of
drawing in the vicinity ; a single print from Turner's
Liber, to show the unison of tint with pen etching, and
the " St. Catherine," lately photographed by Thurston
Thompson, from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre, to
show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with
chalk, would be all that is necessary, and would, I believe,
be in many cases more serviceable than a larger collection,
and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate prints.
Two such examples are peculiarly desirable, because all
other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk
separately, or colour separately, may be seen by the poor-
est student in any cheap illustrated book, or in shop win-
dows. But this unity of tinting with line he cannot gen-
erally see but by some especial enquiry, and in some out
of the way places he could not find a single example of
it. Supposing that this should be so in your own case,
and that you cannot meet with any example of this kind,
try to make the matter out alone, thus :
Take a small and simple photograph ; allow yourself
half an hour to express its subjects with the pen only,
using some permanent liquid colour instead of ink, out-
lining its buildings or trees firmly, and laying in the
deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in
your bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry,
take your sepia or grey, and tint it over, getting now the
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SKETCHING.
finer gradations of the photograph ; and finally, taking
out the higher lights with penknife or blotting-paper.
You will soon find what can be done in this way; and
by a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself
how far the pen may be made serviceable to reinforce
shadows, mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible
masses, and so on. The more time you have, the more
delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with
the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must
keep the two. Practise in this way from one photograph,
allowing yourself sometimes only a quarter of an hour
for the whole thing, sometimes an hour, sometimes two or
three hours ; in each case drawing the whole subject in
full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of
finish in the parts as is possible in the given time. And
this exercise, observe, you will do well to repeat fre-
quently, whether you can get prints and drawings as well
as photographs, or not.
6. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber
Studiorum, or its photographic substitute, faithfully, you
have the complete means in your power of working from
nature on all subjects that interest you, which you should
do in four different ways.
First. When you have full time, and your subject is
one that will stay quiet for you, make perfect light and
shade studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with grey
or brown colour of any kind, reinforced and defined with
the pen.
Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so
rich in detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelli-
gibly in light and shade , make a hasty study of the effect,
and give the rest of the time to a Dureresque expression
of the details. If the subject seems to }7ou interesting,
and there are points about it which you cannot under-
stand, try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it,
SKETCHING.
257
and make a nearer memorandum ; not that you are ever
to bring the details of this nearer sketch into the farther
one, but that you may thus perfect your experience of the
aspect of things, and know that such and such a look of
a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means that
sort of tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer
sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpreta-
tion of your own work. If you have time, however far
your light and shade study in the distance may have been
carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also
your Dureresque and your near memoranda ; for if your
light and shade drawing be good, much of the interesting
detail must be lost in it, or disguised.
Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily
and quickly with a soft pencil, dashed over when done
with one tolerably deep tone of grey, which will fix the
penciL While this fixing colour is wet, take out the
higher lights with the dry brush ; and, when it is quite
dry, scratch out the highest lights with the penknife.
Five minutes, carefully applied, will do much by these
means. Of course the paper is to be white. I do not
like studies on grey paper so well ; for you can get more
gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it
on cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can
with body-colour white, unless you are consummately
skilful. There is no objection to your making your Du-
reresque memoranda on grey or yellow paper, and touch-
ing or relieving them with white ; only, do not depend
much on your white touches, nor make the sketch for
their sake.
Thirdly. Wlien you have neither time for careful
study nor for Dureresque detail, sketch the outline with
pencil, then dash in the shadows with the brush boldly,
trying to do ;ls much as you possibly can at once, and to
get a habit of expedition and decision ; laying more
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SKETCHING.
colour again and again into the tints as they dry, using
every expedient which your practice has suggested to you
of carrying out your chiaroscuro in the manageable and
moist material, taking the colour off here with the dry
brush, scratching out lights in it there with the wooden
handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, dry-
ing it off with your sponge, &c. Then, when the colour
is in, take your pen and mark the outline characters vig-
orously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This
kind of study is very convenient for carrying away pieces
of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on
complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden
effects of sky, &c. ; and it is most useful as a safeguard
against any too servile or slow habits which the minute
copying may induce in you ; for although the endeavour
to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for
display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable ; there are
a velocity and a dash which not only are compatible with
perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which cannot
be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for }tou to
study occasionally for speed and decision, while your con-
tinual course of practice is such as to ensure your retain-
ing an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed,
under such circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempt-
ing; and you will find yourself always beguiled rather
into elaboration than negligence.
Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind
of landscape scenery you are passing through, to get
into the habit of making memoranda of the shapes of
shadows. You will find that many objects of no essential
interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
study, nor a Dureresque one, may yet become of singular
value in consequence of the fantastic shapes of their
shadows ; for it happens often, in distant effect, that the
shadow is by much a more important element than the
SKETCHING.
259
substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 11., seen
within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement
Fig. 11.
of timbers to which the shadows are owing is perceptible ;
but at half a mile's distance, in
bright sunlight, the timbers would
not be seen ; and a good painter's
expression of the bridge would be
merely the large spot, and the a
crossed bars, of pure grey ; wholly
without indication of their cause,
as in Fig. 12. a / and if we saw it
at still greater distances, it would
appear, as in Fig. 12. b and c, di- i
minishing at last to a strange, unin-
telligible, spider-like spot of grey
on the light hill-side. A perfectly
great painter, throughout his dis-
tances, continually reduces his ob-
jects to these shadow abstracts ; c
and the singular, and to many
persons unaccountable, effect of
the confused touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly
>
Fig. 12.
260
SKETCHING.
to this thorough, accuracy and intense meaning of the sha-
dow abstracts.
Studies of this kind are easily made when you are in
haste, with an F. or HB. pencil : it requires some hard-
ness of the point to ensure your drawing delicately
enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle ;
they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally
so everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious
instrument after you are master of the pen and brush,
for the pencil, cunningly used, is both, and will draw
a line with the precision of the one and the gradation
of the other ; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see
the sharp touches, on which the best of the detail de-
pends, getting gradually deadened by time, or to find
the places where force was wanted look shiny, and
like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the
steady use of the pen, or brush, and colour, whenever
time admits of it ; keeping only a small memorandum-
book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed
pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities : but
never being without this.
7. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which
you are at first to draw from nature. But it may perhaps
be serviceable to you, if I also note one or two points
respecting your choice of subjects for study, and the best
special methods of treating some of them ; for one of
by no means the least difficulties which you have at first
to encounter is a peculiar instinct, common as far as I
have noticed, to all beginners, to fix on exactly the most
unmanageable feature in the given scene. There are
many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if
at all, only by the most accomplished artists; and I have
noticed that it is nearly always these which a beginner
will dash at ; or, if not these, it will be something which,
though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture,
SKETCHING.
2G1
and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil
genius of beginners, the following general warnings may
be useful :
1. Do not draw things that you love, on accoitnt of their
associations / or at least do not draw them because you
love them; but merely when you cannot get anything
else to draw. If you try to draw places that you love,
you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat brick
walls, iron railings, gravel Avalks, greenhouses and cpiick-
set hedges ; besides that you will be continually led into
some endeavour to make your drawing pretty, or complete,
which will be fatal to your progress. You need never
hope to get on, if you are the least anxious that the draw-
ing you are actually at work upon should look nice when
it is done. All you have to care about is to make it right,
and to learn as much in doing it as possible. So then,
though when you are sitting in your friend's parlour or in
your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw
anything that is there, for practice ; even the fire-irons or
the pattern on the carpet : be sure that is for practice,
and not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a friendly
poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your
friend bv drawing her room.
Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of
course I am addressing you as a beginner— & time may
come when your work will be precious to everybody ; but
be resolute not to give it away till you know that it is
worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will
know that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of
a drawing, send them a couple of cakes of colour and a
piece of Bristol board : those materials are, for the present,
of more value in that form than if you had spread the one
over the other.
The main reason for this rule is, however, that its ob-
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SKETCHING.
servance will much protect you from the great danger of
trying to make your drawings pretty.
2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished ; especial-
ly if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and
curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel.
A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter
if it comes in your way ; but do not fret yourself if it
will not look right, and choose only things that do not shine.
3. Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly
difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose
rough, worn, and clumsy -looking things as much as pos-
sible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or
profitless study than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor
a better study than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore
at low-tide : in general, everything that you think very
ugly, will be good for you to draw.
4. Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one
thing is seen through another. You will constantly find
a thin tree standing before your chosen cottage, or be-
tween you and the turn of the river ; its near branches
all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult
to represent this ; and though, when the tree is there, you
must not imaginably cut it down, but do it as well as you
can, yet always look for subjects that fall into definite
masses, not into network ; that is, rather for a cottage
with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a thin tree in
front of it ; rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and
rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate
stems.
5. Avoid as far as possible, country divided by hedges.
Perhaps nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so
utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the ordinary
English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted
over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle
line.
SKETCHING.
2G3
Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen
ill, and that the subject overmasters you. It is much bet-
ter that it should, than that you should think you had
entirely mastered it. But, at first, and even for some
time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable fail-
ure ; which, nevertheless, will not be without some whole-
some result.
As, however, I have told you what most definitely to
avoid, I may, perhaps, help you a little by saying what to
seek. In general, all hanks are beautiful things, and will
reward work better than large landscapes. If you live in
a lowland country, you must look for places wrhere the
ground is broken to the river s edges, with decayed posts,
or roots of trees ; or, if by great good luck there should
be such things within your reach, for remnants of stone
quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, &c. Xearly every other
mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful bits
of broken bank at its sides ; better in form and colour
than high chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with
the flowery ground below, are at once the richest and
easiest kind of study : a not very thick trunk, say nine
inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up it spar-
ingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are
always beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they
are not modern rows of pattern cottages, or villas with
Ionic and Doric porticos. Any old English village, or
cluster of farm-houses, drawn with all its ins and outs,
and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely ; much
more a French one. French landscape is generally as
much superior to English as Swiss landscape is to
French ; in some respects, the French is incomparable.
Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I
have recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit
no rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity
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SKETCHING.
and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component
lines.
In drawing villages, take great pains with the gar-
dens ; a rustic garden is in every way beautiful. If you
have time, draw all the rows of cabbages, and hollyhocks,
and broken fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy
roses : you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
anything in purer thoughts.
Make intimate friends of all the brooks in your neigh-
bourhood, and study them ripple by ripple.
Village churches in England are not often good sub-
jects ; there is a peculiar meanness about most of them,
and awkwardness of line. Old manor-houses are often
pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and cathe-
drals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathe-
dral in England from which it is possible to obtain one
subject for an impressive drawing. There is always some
discordant civility, or jarring vergerism about them.
If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only
danger is redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the
first place, to draw a piece of rounded rock, with its
variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its complete
roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
colour. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking
of sketching among hills ; but when once you have done
this, the forms of distant hills will be comparatively easy.
When you have practised for a little time from such of
these subjects as may be accessible to you, you will cer-
tainly find difficulties arising which will make you wish
more than ever for a master's help : these difficulties will
vary according to the character of your own mind (one
question occurring to one person, and one to another), so
that it is impossible to anticipate them all ; and it would
make this too large a book if I answered all that I can
anticipate; you must be content to work on, in good hope
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265
that nature will, in her own time, interpret to you much
for herself; that farther experience on your own part
will make some difficulties disappear ; and that others
will be removed by the occasional observation of such
artists' work as may come in your way. Nevertheless, I
will not close this subject without a few general remarks,
such as may be useful to you after you are somewhat
advanced in power ; and these remarks may, I think, be
conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference
to the drawing of vegetation, water, and skies.
8. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps,
we have said enough about trees already ; yet if you have
done as you were bid, and tried to draw them frequently
enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by this
time to hear a little more of them. You will also recol-
lect that we left our question, respecting the mode of
expressing intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the
first letter. I left it so because I wanted you to learn
the real structure of leaves, by drawing them for your-
self, before I troubled you with the most subtle consider-
ations as to method in drawing them. And by this time,
I imagine, you must have found out two principal
things, universal facts, about leaves j namely, that they
always, in the main tendencies of their lines, indicate a
beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law of
radiation, already referred to ; * and the second, that this
divergence is never formal, but carried out with endless
variety of individual line. I must now press both these
facts on your attention a little farther.
You may perhaps have been surprised that I have not
yet spoken of the works of J. D. Harding, especially if
you happen to have met with the passages referring to
them in Modem Painters, in which they are highly
* See thp eloaing letter in this volume.
12
266
SKETCHING.
praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the
only works by a modern draughtsman which express in
any wise the energy of trees, and the laws of growth, of
which we have been speaking. There are no lithographic
sketches which, for truth of general character, obtained
with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame,
Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are
altogether inferior in power, though sometimes a little
deeper in meaning. Rut you must not take even Hard-
ing for a model, though you may use his works for occa-
sional reference ; and if you can afford to buy his Lessons
on Trees," it will be serviceable to you in various ways,
and will at present help me to explain the point under
consideration. And it is well that I should illustrate this
point by reference to Harding's works, because their great
influence on young students renders it desirable that their
real character should be thoroughly understood.
You will find, first, in the title-page of the Lessons on
Trees, a pretty woodcut, in which the tree stems are
drawn with great truth, and in a very interesting arrange-
ment of lines. Plate 1. is not quite worthy of Mr. Hard-
ing, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think
everything depends on black dots ; still the main lines
are good, and very characteristic of tree growth. Then,
in Plate 2., we come to the point at issue. The first
examples in that plate are given to the pupil that he may
practise from them till his hand gets into the habit of
arranging lines freely in a similar manner ; and they are
stated by Mr. Harding to be universal in application ;
" all outlines expressive of foliage," he says, " are but
modifications of them." They consist of groups of lines,
* Bogue, Fleet Street. If you are not acquainted with Harding's
works (an unlikely supposition, considering' their popularity), and can-
not meet with the one in question, the diagrams given here will enable
you to understand all that is needful for our purposes.
SKETCHING.
267
more or less resembling our Fig. 13. ; and the characters
especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their
inner ends to a common centre ; " that " their ends ter-
minate in [are enclosed byj ovoid curves ; " and that
" the outer ends are most emphatic."
Now, as thus expressive of the
great laws of radiation and en- ^\
closure, the main principle of this
method of execution confirms, in ^/^^ ^ ft ^
a very interesting way, our con- ^
elusions respecting foliage compo-
sition. The reason of the last rule, that the outer end of
the line is to be most emphatic, does not indeed at first
appear ; for the line at one end of a natural leaf is not
more emphatic than the line at the other ; but ultimately,
in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the
leaf mass ; and, as Harding uses these touches, they
express as much of tree character as any mere habit of
touch can express. But, unfortunately, there is another
law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,
which this and all other conventional modes of execution
wholly lose sight of. This second law is, that the radiat-
ing tendency shall be carried out only as a ruling spirit
in reconcilement with perpetual individual caprice on the
part of the separate leaves. So that the moment a touch
is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the
leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its
unity of growth with its companions in the radiating
group.
It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical
the cluster may be, nor how large or vague. You can
hardly have a more formal one than h in Fig 9. p. 71., nor
a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish chestnut,
shedding its leaves, Fig. 14. ; but in either of them, even
268
SKETCHING.
Fig. 14.
the general reader, unpractised in any of the previously
recommended exer-
cises, must see that
there are wandering
lines mixed witli the
radiating ones, and
radiating lines with
the wild ones : and
if he takes the pen
and tries to copy
either of these ex-
amples, he will find
that neither play of
hand to left nor to
right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor any
learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will enable him
to produce, currently, a resemblance of it ; but that he
must either draw it slowly, or give it up. And (which
makes the matter worse still) though gathering the bough,
and putting it close to you, or seeing a piece of near foli-
age against the sky, you may draw the entire outline of
the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever
so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point
of a leaf here, and an edge there ; some of the surfaces will
be confused by glitter, and some spotted with sha.de ; and
if you look carefully through this confusion for the edges
or dark steins which you really can see, and put only those
down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9. nor Fig. 14.,
but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as
Fig. 15 *
Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expres-
sion of these three laws that all good drawing of landscape
* I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being
impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a
woodcut.
SKETCHING.
260
co?isists. There is, first, the organic unity ; the law,
whether of radiation, or parallelism, or concurrent action,
Fig. 15.
which rales the masses of herbs and trees, of rocks, and
clouds, and waves ; secondly \ the individual liberty of the
members subjected to these laws of unity ; and, lastly, the
mystery under which the separate character of each is
more or less concealed.
I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling-
organic law. This is the first distinction between good
artists and bad artists. Your common sketcher or bad
painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they were moss
tied to sticks ; he cannot see the lines of action or growth ;
he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiv-
ing the sweeps of associated curves which the real clouds
are following as they fly ; and he breaks his mountain
side into rugged fragments, wholly unconscious of the lines
of force with which the real rocks have risen, or of the
lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary,
it is the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace
these laws of government ; and his tendency to error is
always in the exaggeration of their authority rather than
in its denial.
Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual charac-
ter and liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks.
And herein the great masters separate themselves finally
from the inferior ones ; for if the men of inferior genius
ever expressed law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individ-
270
SKETCHING.
uality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of trie
sweep of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a
single leaflet or mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Grains-
borough, in his landscape, has great feeling for masses of
form and harmony of colour ; but in the detail gives noth-
ing but meaningless touches ; not even so much as the
species of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being
ever discernible. Now, although both these expressions
of government and individuality are essential to masterly
work, the individuality is the more essential, and the more
difficult of attainment ; and, therefore, that attainment
separates the great masters finally from the inferior ones.
It is the more essential, because, in these matters of beauti-
ful arrangement in visible things, the same rules hold that
hold in moral things. It is a lamentable and unnatural
thing to see a number of men subject to no government,
actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no com-
mon affection : but it would be a more lamentable thing
still, were it possible, to see a number of men so oppressed
into assimilation as to have no more any individual hope
or character, no differences in aim, no dissimilarities of
passion, no irregularities of judgment ; a society in which
no man could help another, since none would be feebler
than himself ; no man admire another, since none would
be stronger than himself ; no man be grateful to another,
since by none he could be relieved ; no man reverence
another, since by none he could be instructed ; a society in
which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer
instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man
would walk as in a frightful dream, seeing spectres of
himself, in everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly
around him in a speechless darkness. Therefore it is that
perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of form
are more essential to them even than their being subdued
by some great gathering law: the law is needful to them
SKETCH I XG.
271
for their perfection and their power, but the difference
is needful to them for their life.
And here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy
the pursuit of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity
of judgment in discerning them, you may always accu-
rately ascertain what are the noble characters in^a piece of
painting, by merely considering what are the noble cha-
racters of man in his association with his fellows. TVnat
grace of manner and refinement of habit are in society,
grace of line and refinement of form are in the association
of visible objects. What advantage or harm there may be
in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or
conversations of men ; rjrecisely that relative degree of
advantage or harm there is/in them as elements of picto-
rial composition. "What power is in liberty or relaxation
to strengthen or relieve human souls ; that power, pre-
cisely in the same relative degree, play and laxity of line
have to strengthen or refresh the expression of a picture.
And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise
in companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity
of life, simplicity of custom, and balance of authority ;
precisely that kind of goodness and greatness may be
given to a picture by the purity of its color, the severity
of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.
You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these
analogies too far. They cannot be pushed too far ; they
are so precise and complete, that the farther you pursue
them, the clearer, the more certain, the more useful you
will find them. They will not fail you in one particular,
or in any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice,
no moral virtue, which has not its precise prototype in the
art of painting; so that you may at your will illustrate
the moral habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit.
Affection and discord, fretfulness and quietness, feeble-
ness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty,
272
SKETCHING.
and all other such habits, and every conceivable modifica-
tion and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with
mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and colour;
and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but also
every conceivable shade of human character and passion,
from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king, to
the innocent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however,
to the investigation of the higher branches of composi-
tion, matters which it would be quite useless to treat of in
this book; and I only allude to them here, in order that
you may understand how the utmost noblenesses of art are
concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you
in your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest at-
tention, and the most noble execution, that it is possible
to express these varieties of individual character, on
which all excellence of portraiture depends, whether of
masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
'Now you will be able to understand, among other mat-
ters, wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the
shortcoming, of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is ex-
cellent in so far as it fondly observes, wTith more truth
than any other work of the kind, the great laws of growth
and action in trees : it fails — and observe, not in a minor,
but in a principal point — because it cannot rightly render
any one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in
this it fails, not from mere carelessness or incompletion,
but of necessity; the true drawing of detail being for
evermore impossible to a hand which has contracted a
habit of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,
and stops, and says calmly — That leaf is of such and such
a character ; I will give him a friend who will entirely
suit him: then he considers what his friend ought to be,
and having determined, he draws his friend. This pro-
cess may be as quick as lightning when the master is
SKETCHING.
273
great — one of the sons of the giants ; or it may be slow
and timid : but the process is always gone through ; no
touch or form is ever added to another by a good painter
without a mental determination and affirmation. But
when the hand has got into a habit, leaf Xo. 1. necessi-
tates leaf No. 2. ; you cannot stop, your hand is as a horse
with the bit in its teeth ; or rather is, for the time, a
machine, throwing out leaves to order and pattern, all
alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however pain-
fully ; make it understand that it is not to have its own
way any more, that it shall never more slip from one
touch to another without orders ; otherwise it is not you
who are the master, but your fingers. You may therefore
study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;* and
you may properly admire the dexterity which applies the
habit of the hand so well, and produces results on the
whole so satisfactory : but you must never copy it, other-
wise your progress will be at once arrested. The utmost
you can ever hope to do, would be a sketch in Harding's
manner, but of far inferior dexterity ; for he has given
his life's toil to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose,
have other things to work at besides drawing. You would
also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding what
truly great work was, or what Nature was ; but by the
earnest and complete study of facts, yon will gradually
come to understand the one and love the other more and
more, whether yon can draw well yourself or not.
Lastly, I have yet to say a few words respecting the third
law above stated, that of mystery ; the law, namely, that
nothing is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments, and
* His lithographic sketches, those, for instance, in the Park and the
Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit than the
more ambitious engravings in his Principles and Practice of Art. There
are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this latter work.
12*
274
SKETCHING.
under various conditions of obscurity.* This last fact
renders the visible objects of Nature complete as a type
of the human nature. We have, observe, first, Subordi-
nation / secondly, Individuality / lastly, and this not the
least essential character, Incomprehensibility / a perpet-
ual lesson in every serrated point and shining vein which
escape or deceive our sight among the forest leaves, how
little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the
rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all
that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at
first think we understand, a closer and more loving watch-
fulness would show to be full of mystery, never to be
either fathomed or withdrawn.
The expression of this final character in landscape has
never been completely reached by any except Turner;
posed light and shade which renders the etchings of the
* On this law you will do well, if you can get access to it, to look at
the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters.
Fig. 16.
nor can you hope to reach
it at all until you have
given much time to the
practice of art. Only
try always when you are
sketching any object
with a view to comple-
tion in light and shade,
to draw only those parts
of it which you really
see definitely; prepar-
ing for the after devel-
opment of the forms by
chiaroscuro. It is this
preparation by isolated
touches for a future ar-
rangement of superim-
SKETCHING.
275
Liber Studio-rum so inestimable as examples and so
peculiar. The character exists more or less in them
exactly in proportion to the pains that Turner has taken.
Thus the ^Fsacus and ITesperie was wrought out with
the greatest possible care ; and the principal branch on
the near tree is etched as in Fig. 16. The work looks at
first like a scholar's instead of a master's ; but when the
light and shade are added, every touch falls into its place,
and a perfect expression of grace and complexity results.
Xay even before the light and shade are added, you ought
to be able to see that these irregular and broken lines,
especially where the expression is given of the way the
stem loses itself in the leaves, are more true than the
monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before
Turner's time, had been employed, even by the best
masters, in their distant masses. Fig. 17. is sufficiently
characteristic of the man-
ner of the old woodcuts
after Titian ; in which,
you see, the leaves are too
much of one shape, like
bunches of fruit ; and the
boughs too completely
seen, besides being some-
what soft and leathery
in aspect, owing to the ■ Fig. 17>
want of angles in their
outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat con-
ventional structure was only given in haste to distant
masses ; and their excpiisite delineation of the foreground,
kept their conventionalism from degeneracy : but in the
drawing of the Caracci and other derivative masters,
the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and sinks grad-
ually into scrawled work, like. Fig. 18., about the worst
which it is possible to get into the habit of using, though
276
SKETCHING.
an ignorant person might perhaps suppose it more
"free," and therefore better than Fig. 16. Note, also,
that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a
bough is wrongly drawn, because it .looks contracted
unnaturally somewhere, as in Fig. 16., just above the
foliage. Very often the muscular action which is to be
expressed by the line, runs into the middle of the branch,
and the actual outline of the branch at that place may be
dimly seen, or not at all ; and it is then only by the
future shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its dis-
appearance, will be indicated.
One point more remains
to be noted about trees, and
I have done. In the minds
of our ordinary water-colour
artists, a distant tree seems
only to be conceived as a
flat green blot, grouping
pleasantly with other masses,
and giving cool colour to
the landscape, but differing
nowise, in texture, from the
blots of other shapes, which
these painters use to express
stones, or water, or figures.
But as soon as you have
Fig. is. drawn trees carefully a little
while, you will be impressed,
and impressed more strongly the better you draw them,
with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree
is not a flat and even piece of colour, but a more or less
globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly pass-
ing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely
softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all charac-
ters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching
SKETCHING.
277
or roughening the surface, but is always associated with
such delicate expressions of form and growth as are only
imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife passed
lightly over this careful drawing, will do a good deal ; but
you must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim
much at this softness in the lines of the drawing itself, by
crossing them delicately, and more or less effacing and
confusing the ed«;es. You must invent, according to the
character of tree, various modes of execution adapted to
express its texture ; but always keep this character of
softness in your mind, and in your scope of aim ; for in
most landscapes it is the intention of nature that the ten-
derness and transparent infinitude of her foliage should be
felt, even at the far distance, in the most distinct opposi-
tion to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or
buildings.
9. We were, in the second place, to consider a little
the modes of representing water, of which important fea-
ture of landscape I have hardly said anything yet.
Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conven-
tional lines, whose horizontality is supposed to convey the
idea of its surface. In paintings, white dashes or bars of
light are used for the same purpose.
a. But these and all other such expedients are vain and
absurd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture
in itself, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If
you give the time necessary to draw these reflections, dis-
turbing them here and there as you see the breeze or cur-
rent disturb them, you will get the effect of the water;
but if you have not patience to draw the reflections, no
expedient will give you a true effect. The picture in the
pool needs nearly as much delicate drawing as the picture
above the pool ; except only that if there be the least mo-
tion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will
be diffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain
278
SKETCHING.
decisive, and the oblique ones decisive in proportion to
their steepness.
b. A few close studies will soon teach yon this : the only
thing yon need to be told is to watch carefully the lines
of disturbance on the surface, as when a bird swims
across it, or a fish rises, or the current plays round a
stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to
get the curves of these lines true ; the whole value of
your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by
your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild
duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dis-
satisfied with your result, always try for more unity and
delicacy : if your reflections are only soft and gradated
enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.
"When you are taking pains,, work the softer reflections,
where they are drawn out by motion in the water, with
touches as nearly horizontal as may be ; but when you are
in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with
vertical lines. The actual construction of a calm elonga-
ted reflection is with horizontal lines : but it is often im-
possible to draw the descending shades delicately enough
with a horizontal touch ; and it is best always when you
are in a hurry, and sometimes when yon are not, to use
the vertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflec-
tions become shaken, and must be drawn with bold modu-
latory descending lines.
I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the
greatest possible importance to draw the curves of the
shore rightly. Their perspective is, if not more subtle, at
least more stringent than that of any other lines in Na-
ture. It will not be detected by the general observer, if
you miss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud,
or the perspective of a building ;* but every intelligent
* The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of
SKETCHING.
279
spectator will feel the difference between a rightly drawn
bend of shore or shingle, and a false one. Absolutely
right, in difficult river perspectives seen from heights, I
believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and ob-
serve, there is no rule for them. To develope the curve
mathematically would require a knowledge of the exact
quantity of water in the river, the shape of its bed, and
the hardness of the rock or shore ; and even with these
data, the problem would be one which no mathematician
could solve but approximative^. The instinct of the eye
can do it ; nothing else.
If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by
the great differences between the aspect of the reflected
image and that of the object casting it ; and if you wish
to know the law of reflection, it is simply this : Suppose
all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in
appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely
the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-
turvy. Then, whatever you can see, from the place in
which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under
the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the
true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.
If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water,
take a mirror, lay it horizontally on the table, put some
books and papers upon it, and draw them and their reflec-
tions ; moving them about, and watching how their reflec-
tions alter, and chiefly how their reflected colours and
shades differ from their own colours and shades, by being
brought into other oppositions. This difference in chiaro-
scuro is a more important character in water painting
than mere difference in form.
G. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you
buildings is of little consequence ; but he will find it so ultimately.
See the remarks on this point in the Preface.
280
SKETCHING.
will see shadows on the bottom, or on the surface, continu-
ally modifying the reflections ; and in a clear mountain
stream, the most wonderful complications of effect resulting
from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it, min-
gling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through
the water. Do not be frightened at the complexity ; but,
on the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look
at it well, making out everything that you see, and dis-
tinguishing each component part of the effect. There
will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted
always by refraction, so that if the general structure of
the stone shows straight parallel lines above the water,
you may be sure they will be bent where they enter it ;
then the reflection of the part of the stone above the
water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen
through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which ;
and wherever the reflection is darkest, you will see
through the water best, and vice versa. Then the real
shadow of the stone crosses both these images, and where
that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective, and
where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface
of the water, and of any dust or motes that may be float-
ing on it : but whether you are to see, at the same spot,
most of the bottom of the water, or of the reflection of the
objects above, depends on the position of the eye. The
more you look down into the water, the better you see ob-
jects through it: the more you look along it, the eye be-
ing low, the more you- see the reflection of objects above
it. Hence the colour of a given space of surface in a
stream will entirely change while you stand still in the
same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head ; and
thus the colours with which water is painted are an indi-
cation of the position of the spectator, and connected
inseparably with the perspective of the shores. The
most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain
SKETCHING.
281
streams is when the water is shallow, and the stones
at the bottom are rich reddish-orange and black, and the
water is seen at an angle which exactly divides the visi-
ble colours between those of the stones and that of the
sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting
purple, obtained by the blending of the blue and the
orange-red, broken by the play of innumerable gradations
in the stones, is indescribably lovely.
d. All this seems complicated enough already ; but if
there be a strong colour in the clear water itself, as of
green or blue in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena are
doubly involved ; for the darker reflections now become
of the colour of the water. The reflection of a black
gondola, for instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure
dark green. And, farther, the colour of the water itself
is of three kinds : one, seen on the surface, is a kind of
milky bloom : the next is seen where the waves let light
through them, at their edges ; and the third, shown as a
change of colour on the objects seen through the water.
Thus, the same wave that makes a white object look of a
clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or violet-
coloured bloom on its surface, and will be made pure em-
erald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges.
I tell you this that you may approach lakes and streams
with reverence, and study them as carefully as other
things, not hoping to express them by a few horizontal
dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.* Not but that
* It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water,
so as to make the liquid definitely blue ; fill a large white basin with the
solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or lie in it ; walnut
shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc. Then study the effects or
the reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or submerged portions
of the floating objects, as tbey appear through the blue liquid ; noting
especially how, as you lower your head and look along the surface, yo_i
see the reflections clearly ; and how, as you raise your head, you los j
the reflections, and see the submerged stems clearly.
282
SKETCHING.
much may be done by tremulous blots, when you know
precisely what you mean by them, as yon will see by many
of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at the
National Gallery ; but you must have painted water many
and many a day — yes, and all day long — before you can
hope to do anything like those.
10. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before pass-
ing to the clouds, I say nothing special about ground.
But there is too much to be said about that to admit of
my saying it here. You will find the principal laws of
its structure examined at length in the fourth volume
of Modern Painters ; and if you can get that volume,
and copy carefully Plate 21., which I have etched after
Turner with great pains, it will givTe you as much
help as you need in the linear expression of ground-
surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of
masses in irregular ground: much may be done in this
way by careful watching of the perspective diminutions
of its herbage, as well as by contour ; and much also by
shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree
trunks on any undulating ground with entire carefulness,
you will be surprised to find how much they explain of
the form and distance of the earth on which they fall.
Passing then to skies, note that there is this great
peculiarity about sky subject, as distinguished from earth
subject ;— that the clouds, not being much liable to man's
interference, are always beautifully arranged. You can-
not be sure of this in any other features of landscape.
The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene especi-
ally depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker
blasts or the landlord quarries ; and the spot of green
which Nature left with a special purpose by her dark
forest sides, and finished with her most delicate grasses, is
always that which the farmer ploughs or builds upon.
But the clouds, though we can hide them with smoke,
SKETCHING.
283
and mix them with poison, cannot be quarried nor built
over, and they are always therefore gloriously arranged ;
so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers of
memory you need not hope to approach the effect of any
sky that interests you. For both its grace and its glow
depend upon the united influence of every cloud within
its compass : they all move and burn together in a mar-
vellous harmony ; not a cloud of them is out of its ajD-
pointed place, or fails of its part in the choir : and if you
are not able to recollect (which in the case of a compli-
cated sky it is impossible you should) precisely the form
and position of all the clouds at a given moment, you
cannot draw the sky at all ; for the clouds will not fit if
you draw one part of them three or four minutes before
another. You must try therefore to help what memory you
have, by sketching at the utmost possible speed the whole
range of the clouds ; marking, by any shorthand or sym-
bolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of
each, as transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory ;
giving afterwards such completion to the parts as your
recollection will enable you to do. This, however, only
when the sky is interesting from its general asj)ect ; at
other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a single
cloud ; sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six
minutes quite steady enough to let you mark out its prin-
cipal masses; and one or two white or crimson lines which
cross the sunrise will often stay without serious change
for as long. And in order to be the readier in drawing
them, practise occasionally drawing lumps of cotton,
which will teach you better than any other stable thing
the kind of softness there is in clouds. For you will find
when you have made a few genuine studies of sky, and
then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordi-
nary artists have always fallen into one of two faults ;
either, in rounding the clouds, they make them as solid
284
SKETCHING.
and hard-edged as a heap of stones tied up in a sack, or
they represent them not as rounded at all, but as vague
wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they
have done enough in leaving a little white paper between
dashes of blue, or in taking an irregular space out with
the sponge. Now clouds are not as solid as flour-sacks ;
but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy nor flat.
They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured
mist ; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word ; they are
not more drifted into form than they are carved into
form, the warm air around them cutting them into shape by
absorbing the visible vapour beyond certain limits ; hence
their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one
hand, as from that of flat films or shapeless mists on the
other. And the worst of all is, that while these forms are
difficult enough to draw on any terms, especially consid-
ering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn also
at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any
others, the force of light in clouds being wholly unattain-
able by art ; so that if we put shade enough to express
their form as positively as it is expressed in reality, we
must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least
succeed with them, that you will hardly, I think, lose
courage. Outline them often with the pen, as you can
catch them here and there ; one of the chief uses of doing
this will be not so much the memorandum so obtained as
the lesson you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-
outlines. You will always find yourself at a loss to see
where the outline really is ; and when drawn it will al-
ways look hard and false, and will assuredly be either
too round or too square, however often you alter it, mere-
ly passing from the one fault to the other and back
again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean be-
SKETCHING.
285
tween roundness and squareness in all its coils or battle-
ments. I speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus
cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky
cannot be outlined ; — they can only be sketched, like locks
of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly developed
bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough,
and may be drawn with decision. "When you have thus
accustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of
clouds, try to work out their light and shade, just as care-
fully as you do that of other things, looking exclusively
for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's
Italy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you
have access to some examples of Turner's own work.
No other artist ever yet drew the sky: even Titian's
clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in
the " Ben Arthur," " Source of Arveron," and " Calais
Pier," are among the best of Turner's storm studies; and
of the upper clouds, the vignettes to Rogers's Poems fur-
nish as many examples as you need.
If you have any real talent for drawing, you will take
delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness, which the
studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among
the fields and hills ; and be assured that the more quietly
and single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the
quicker, on the whole, will your progress be.
El. Drawing, 91-134.
CHAPTER Y.
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING-.
§ 1. Among the several characteristics of great treatment
which have been alluded to without being enlarged upon,
one will be found several times named ; — reserve.
It is necessary for our present purpose that we should
understand this quality more distinctly. I mean by it the
power which a great painter exercises over himself in fix-
ing certain limits, either of force, of color, or of quantity
of work ; — limits which he will not transgress in any part
of his picture, even though here and there a painful sense
of incomplction may exist, under the fixed conditions, and
might tempt an inferior workman to infringe them. The
nature of this reserve we must understand in order that
we may also determine the nature of true completion or
perfectness, which is the end of composition.
§ 2. For perfectness, properly so called, means harmony.
The word signifies, literally, the doing our work thorough-
ly. It does not mean carrying it up to any constant and
established degree of finish, but carrying the whole of it
up to a degree determined upon. In a chalk or pencil
sketch by a great master, it will often be found that the
deepest shades are feeble tints of pale grey ; the outlines
nearly invisible, and the forms brought out by a ghostly
delicacy of touch, which, on looking close to the paper,
will be indistinguishable from its general texture. A
single line of ink, occurring anywhere in such a drawing,
would of course destroy it ; placed in the darkness of a
mouth or nostril, it would turn the expression into a cari-
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
287
cature ; on a cheek or brow it would be simply a blot.
Yet let the blot remain, and let the master work up to it
with lines of similar force ; and the drawing which was
before perfect, in terms of pencil, will become, under his
. hand, perfect in terms of ink ; and what was before a
scratch on the cheek will become a necessary and beautiful
part of its gradation.
All great work is thus reduced under certain conditions,
and its right to be called complete depends on its fulfil-
ment of them, not on the nature of the conditions chosen.
Habitually, indeed, we call a coloured work which is satis-
factory to us, finished, and a chalk drawing unfinished ;
but in the mind of the master, all his work is, according
to the sense in which you use the word, equally perfect or
imperfect. Perfect, if you regard its purpose and limita-
tion ; imperfect, if you compare it with the natural stand-
ard. In what appears to you consummate, the master
has assigned to himself terms of shortcoming, and marked
with a sad severity the point up to which he will permit
himself to contend with nature. Were it not for his
acceptance of such restraint, he could neither cpiit his
work, nor endure it. He could not quit it, for he would
always perceive more that might be done ; he could not
endure it, because all doing ended only in more elaborate
deficiency.
§ 3. But we are apt to forget, in modern clays, that the
reserve of a man who is not putting forth half his strength
is different in manner and dignity from the effort of one
who can do no more. Charmed, and justly charmed, by
the harmonious sketches of great painters, and by the
grandeur of their acquiescence in the point of pause, we
have put ourselves to produce sketches as an end instead
of a means, and thought to imitate the painter's scornful
restraint of his own power, by a scornful rejection of the
things beyond ours. For many reasons, therefore, it be-
288
PEJRFECTNE S S IN SKETCHING.
comes desirable to understand precisely and finally what
a good painter means by completion.
§ 4. The sketches of true painters may be classed under
the following heads : —
I. Experimental. — In which they are assisting an im-
perfect conception of a subject by trying the look of it on
paper in different ways.
By the greatest men this kind of sketch is hardly ever
made ; they conceive their subjects distinctly at once, and
their sketch is not to try them, but to fasten them down.
Raphael's form the only important exception — and the
numerous examples of experimental work by him are evi-
dence of his composition being technical rather than
imaginative. I have never seen a drawing of the kind
by any great Venetian. Among the nineteen thousand
sketches by Turner — which I arranged in the National
Gallery — there was, to the best of my recollection, not one.
In several instances the work, after being carried forward
a certain length, had been abandoned and begun again
with another view; sometimes also two or more modes of
treatment had been set side by side with a view to choice.
But there were always two distinct imaginations contend-
ing for realization — not experimental modifications of
one.
§ 5. II. Determinant. — The fastening down of an idea
in the simplest terms, in order that it may not be disturbed
or confused by after work. Nearly all the great com-
posers do this, methodically, before beginning a painting.
Such sketches are usually in a high degree resolute and
compressive ; the best of them outlined or marked calmly
with the pen, and deliberately washed with color, indicat-
ing the places of the principal lights.
Fine drawings of this class never show any hurry or
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
289
confusion. They are the expression of concluded opera-
tions of mind, are drawn slowly, and are not so much
sketches, as maps.
§ 6. III. Commemorative. — Containing records of facts
which the master required. These in their most elaborate
form are " studies," or drawings, from Nature, of parts
needed in the composition, often highly finished in the
part which is to be introduced. In this form, however,
they never occur by the greatest imaginative masters.
For by a truly great inventor everything is invented ; no
atom of the work is unmodified by his mind ; and no study
from nature, however beautiful, could be introduced by
him into his design without change; it would not tit with
the rest. Finished studies for introduction are therefore
chiefly by Leonardo and Raphael, both technical designers
rather than imaginative ones.
Commemorative sketches, by great masters, are generally
hasty, merely to put them in mind of motives of invention,
or they are shorthand memoranda of things with which
they do not care to trouble their memory ; or, finally,
accurate notes of things which they must not modify by
invention, as local detail, costume, and such like. You
may find perfectly accurate drawings of coats of arms,
portions of dresses, pieces of architecture, and so on, by
all the great men ; but you will not find elaborate studies
of bits of their pictures.
§ 7. When the sketch is made merely as a memorandum,
it is impossible to say how little, or what kind of drawing,
may be sufficient for the purpose. It is of course likely
to be hasty from its very nature, and unless the exact pur-
pose be understood, it may be as unintelligible as a piece
of shorthand writing. For instance, in the corner of a
sheet of sketches made at sea, among those of Turner, at
the National Gallery, occurs this one, Fig. 19. I suppose
290
PEBFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
most persons would not see much use in it. It neverthe-
less was probably one of the most important sketches made
in Turner's life,, fixing for ever in his mind certain facts
respecting the sunrise from a clear sea-horizon. Having
o
Fig. 19.
myself watched such sunrise, occasionally, I perceive this
sketch to mean as follows : —
(Half circle at the top.) When the sun was only half
out of the sea, the horizon was sharply traced across its
disk, and red streaks of vapor crossed the lower part of it.
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
291
(Horseshoe underneath.) When the sun had risen so
far as to show three-quarters of its diameter, its light
became so great as to conceal the sea-horizon, consuming
it away in descending rays.
(Smaller horseshoe below.) When on the point of de-
taching itself from the horizon, the sun still consumed
away the line of the sea, and looked as if pulled down
by it.
(Broken oval.) Having risen about a fourth of its
diameter above the horizon, the sea-line reappeared ; but
the risen orb was flattened by refraction into an oval.
(Broken circle.) Having risen a little farther above the
sea-line, the sun, at last, got itself round, and all right,
with sparkling reflection on the waves just below the sea-
line.
This memorandum is for its purpose entirely perfect
and efficient, though the sun is not drawn carefully round,
but with a dash of the pencil ; but there is no affected or
desired slightness. Could it have been drawn round as
instantaneously, it would have been. The purpose is
throughout determined ; there is no scrawling, as in vul-
gar sketching. "x"
§ 8. Again, Fig. 20 is a facsimile of one of Turner's
" memoranda," of a complete subject, f Lausanne, from the
road to Fribourg.
This example is entirely characteristic of his usual draw-
ings from nature, which unite two characters, being both
* The word in the uppermost note, to the right of the sun, is "red ; "
the others, " yellow," " purple," "cold" light grey. He always noted
the colours of the skies in this way.
f It is not so good a facsimile as those I have given from Durer, for
the original sketch is in light pencil ; and the thickening and delicate
emphasis of the lines, on which nearly all the beauty of the drawing
depended, cannot be expressed in the woodcut, though marked by a
double line as well as I could. But the figure will answer its purpose
well enough in showing Turner's mode of sketching.
292 PERFECTNESS TN SKETCHING.
PEKFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
293
commemorative and determinant: — Commemorative, in so
far as they note certain facts about the place : determi-
nant, in that they record an impression received from the
place there and then, together with the principal arrange-
ment of the composition in which it was afterwards to be
recorded. In this mode of sketching, Turner differs from
all other men whose work I have studied. lie never
draws accurately on the spot, with the intention of modi-
fying or composing afterwards from the materials; but
instantly modifies as he draws, placing his memoranda
where they are to be ultimately used, and taking exactly
what he wants, not a fragment or line more.
§ 9. This sketch has been made in the afternoon. He
had been impressed as he walked up the hill, by the van-
ishing of the lake in the golden horizon, without end of
waters, and by the opposition of the pinnacled castle and
cathedral to its level breadth. That must be drawn ! and
from this spot, wdiere all the buildings are set well together.
But it lucklessly happens that, though the buildings come
just where he wants them in situation, they don't in height.
For the castle (the square mass on the right) is in reality
higher than the cathedral, and would block out the end
of the lake. Down it goes instantly a hundred feet, that
we may see the lake over it ; without the smallest regard
for the military position of Lausanne.
§ 10. Next : The last low spire on the left is in truth
concealed behind the nearer bank, the town running far
down the hill (and climbing another hill) in that direction.
But the group of spires, without it, would not be rich
enough to give a proper impression of Lausanne, as a
spiry place. Turner quietly sends to fetch the church
from round the corner, places it where he likes, and indi-
cates its distance only by aerial perspective (much greater
in the pencil drawing than in the woodcut).
§ 11. But again : Not only the spire of the lower
294
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING-.
church, hut the peak of the Rochers d'Enfer (that highest
in the distance) would in reality be out of sight; it is
much farther round to the left. This would never do
either ; for without it, we should have no idea that Lau-
sanne was opposite the mountains, nor should we have a
nice sloping line to lead us into the distance.
With the same unblushing tranquillity of mind in which
he had ordered up the church, Turner sends also to fetch
the Rochers d'Enfer ; and puts them also where he
chooses, to crown the slope of distant hill, which, as every
traveller knows, in its decline to the west, is one of the
most notable features of the view from Lausanne.
§ 12. These modifications, easily traceable in the large
features of the design, are carried out with equal audacity
and precision in every part of it. Every one of those
confused lines on the right indicates something that is
really there, only everything is shifted and sorted into the
exact places that Turner chose. The group of dark
objects near us at the foot of the bank is a cluster of
mills, which, when the picture was completed, were to be
the blackest things in it, and to throw back the castle, and
the golden horizon ; while the rounded touches at the
bottom, under the castle, indicate a row of trees, which
follow a brook coming out of the ravine behind us ; and
were going to be made very round indeed in the picture
(to oppose the spiky and angular masses of castle) and
very consecutive, in order to form another conducting line
into the distance.
§ 13. These motives, or motives like them, might per-
haps be guessed on looking at the sketch. But no one
without going to the spot would understand the meaning
of the vertical lines in the left-hand lowest corner.
They are a " memorandum " of the artificial vertical-
ness of a low sandstone cliff, which has been cut down
there to give space for a bit of garden belonging to a
PEEFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
295
public-house beneath, from which garden a path leads
along the ravine to the Lausanne rifle ground. The value
of these vertical lines in repeating those of the cathedral
is very great ; it would be greater still in the completed
picture, increasing the sense of looking down from a height,
and giving grasp of, and power over, the whole scene.
§ 14. Throughout the sketch, as in all that Turner made,
the observing and combining intellect acts in the same man-
ner. Not a line is lost, nor a moment of time ; and though
the pencil flics, and the whole thing is literally done as fast
as a piece of shorthand writing, it is to the full as purpose-
ful and compressed, so that while there are indeed dashes
of the pencil which are unintentional, they are only unin-
tentional as the form of a letter is, in fast writing, not
from Avant of intention, but from the accident of haste.
§ 15. I know not if the reader can understand, — I my-
self cannot, though I see it to be demonstrable, — the
simultaneous occurrence of idea which produces such a
drawing as this : the grasp of the whole, from the laying
of the first line, which induces continual modifications of
all that is done, out of respect to parts not done yet.
~Nq line is ever changed or effaced ; no experiment made ;
but every touch is placed with reference to all that are to
succeed, as to all that have gone before ; every addition
takes its part, as the stones in an arch of a bridge ; the last
touch locks the arch. Remove that keystone, or remove
any other of the stones of the vault, and the whole will fall.
§ 16. I repeat — the powder of mind which accomplishes
this, is yet wholly inexplicable to me, as it was when first
I defined it in the chapter on imagination associative, in
the second volume. But the grandeur of the power im-
presses me daily more and more; and, in quitting this
subject, lot mo assert finally, in clearest and strongest
terms, that no painting is of any true imaginative perfect-
ness at all, unless it has been thus conceived.
296
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
One sign of its being thus conceived may be always
found in the straightforwardness of its work. There are
continual disputes among artists as to . the best way of
doing things, which may nearly all be resolved into con-
fessions of indetermi nation. If you know precisely what
you want, you will not feel much hesitation in setting
about it ; and a picture may be painted almost any way,
so only that it can be a straight way.. Give a true painter
a ground of black, white, scarlet, or green, and out of it
he will bring what you choose. From the black, bright-
ness ; from the white, sadness ; from the scarlet, cool-
ness ; from the green, glow : he will make anything out
of anything, but in each case his method will be pure,
direct, perfect, the shortest and simplest possible. You
will find him, moreover, indifferent as to succession of
process. Ask him to begin at the bottom of the picture
instead of the top, — to finish two square inches of it with-
out touching the rest, or to lay a separate ground for
every part before finishing any ; — it is all the same to
him ! What he will do if left to himself, depends on
mechanical convenience, and on the time at his disposal.
If he has a large brush in his hand, and plenty of one colour
ground, he may lay as much as is wanted of that colour, at
once, in every part of the picture where it is to occur ;
and if any is left, perhaps walk to another canvas, and
lay the rest of it where it will be wanted on that. If, on
the contrary, he has a small brush in his hand, and is in-
terested in a particular spot of the picture, he will, per-
haps, not stir from it till that bit is finished. But the ab-
solutely best, or centrally, and entirely right way of
painting is as follows : —
§ 17. A light ground, white, red, yellow, or grey, not
brown, or black. On that an entirely accurate, and firm
black outline of the whole picture, in its principal masses.
The outline to be exquisitely correct as far as it reaches,
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
297
but not to include small details ; the use of it being to
limit the masses of first colour. The ground-colours then to
be laid firmly, each on its own proper part of the picture,
as inlaid work in a mosaic table, meeting each other truly
at the edges : as much of each being laid as will get itself
into the state which the artist requires it to be in for his
second painting, by the time he comes to it. On this first
colour, the second colours and subordinate masses laid in
due order, now, of course, necessarily without previous
outline, and all small detail reserved to the last, the brace-
let being not touched, nor indicated in the last, till the
arm is finished.""
§ 18. This is, as far as it can be expressed in few words,
the right, or Venetian way of painting ; but it is incapa-
ble of absolute definition, for it depends on the scale, the
material, and the nature of the object represented, koto
much a great painter will do with his first colour ; or how
many after processes he will use. Yery often the first
colour, richly blended and worked into, is also the last ;
sometimes it wants a glaze only to modify it ; sometimes
an entirely different colour above it. Turner's storm-
blues, for instance, were produced by a black ground,
with opaque blue, mixed with white, struck over it.f The
amount of detail given in the first colour will also depend
* Thus, in the Holy Family of Titian, lately purchased for the Na-
tional Gallery, the piece of St. Catherine's dress over her shoulders is **
painted on the under dress, after that was dry. All its value would
have been lost, had the slightest tint or trace of it been given previously.
This picture, I think, and certainly many of Tintoret's, are painted on
dark grounds ; but this is to save time, and with some loss to the future
brightness of the colour.
f In cleaning the "Hero and Leander," now in the National collec-
tion, these upper glazes were taken off, and only the black ground left.
I remember the picture when its distance was of the most exquisite
blue. I have no doubt the "Fire at Sea" has had its distance de-
stroyed in the same manner.
13*
298
PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING.
on convenience. For instance, if a jewel fastens a fold of
dress, a Venetian will lay probably a piece of the jewel
colour in its place at the time he draws the fold ; but if
the jewel falls upon the dress, he will paint the folds only
in the ground colour, and the jewel afterwards. For in
the first case his hand must pause, at any rate, where the
fold is fastened ; so that he may as well mark the colour
of the gem : but he would have to check his hand in the
- sweep with which he drew the drapery, if he painted a
jewel that fell upon it with the first colour. So far, how-
ever, as he can possibly use the under colour, he will, in
whatever he has to superimpose. There is a pretty little
instance of such economical work in the painting of the
pearls on the breast of the elder princess, in our best Paul
Veronese (Family of Darius). The lowest is about the
size of a small hazel-nut, and falls on her rose-red dress.
Any other but a Venetian would have put a complete
piece of white paint over the dress, for the whole pearl,
and painted into that the colours of the stone. But Vero-
nese knows beforehand that all the dark side of the pearl
will reflect the red of the dress. He will not put white
over the red, only to put red over the white again. He
leaves the actual dress for the dark side of the pearl, and
with two small separate touches, one white, another brown,
places its high light- and shadow. This he does with per-
fect care and calm ; but in two decisive seconds. There is
#no dash, nor display, nor hurry, nor error. The exactly
right thing is done in the exactly right place, and not one
atom of colour, nor moment of time spent vainly. Look
close at the two touches, — you wonder what they mean.
Retire six feet from the picture — the pearl is there !
§ 19. The degree in which the ground colours are ex-
tended over his picture, as he works, is to a great painter
absolutely indifferent. It is all the same to him whether
he grounds a head, and finishes it at once to the shoulders,
PERFECTNESS EN SKETCHING.
299
leaving all round it white; or whether he grounds the
whole picture. His harmony, paint as he will, never can be
complete till the last touch is given ; so long as it remains
incomplete, he does not care how little of it is suggested,
or how many notes are missing. All is wrong till all is
right ; and he must be able to bear the all- wron guess till
his work is done, or he cannot paint at all. His mode of
treatment will, therefore, depend on the nature of his sub-
ject; as is beautifully shown in the water-colour sketches
by Turner in the National Gallery. His general system
was to complete inch by inch; leaving the paper quite
white all round, especially if the work was to be delicate.
The most excpiisite drawings left unfinished in the col-
lection— those at Rome and Naples — are thus outlined
accurately on pure white paper, begun in the middle of
the sheet, and worked out to the side, finishing as he
proceeds. If, however, any united effect of light or colour
is to embrace a large part of the subject, he will lay it in
with a broad wash over the whole paper at once ; then
paint into it using it as a ground, and modifying it in the
pure Venetian maimer. His oil pictures were laid roughly
with ground colours, and painted into with such rapid skill,
that the artists who used to see him finishino; at the
Academy sometimes suspected him of having the picture
finished underneath the colors he showed, and removing,
instead of adding, as they watched.
§ 20. But, whatever the means used may be, the certainty
and directness of them imply absolute grasp of the whole
subject, and without this grasp there is no good painting.
This, finally, let me declare, without cpialification — that
partial conception is no conception. The whole picture
must be imagined, or none of it is. And this grasp of the
whole implies very strange and sublime equalities of mind.
It is not possible, unless the feelings are completely under
control ; the least excitement or passion will disturb the
300
PBEFEOTNESS IN SKETCHING.
measured equity of power ; a painter needs to be as cool
as a general ; and as little moved or subdued by his sense
,pf pleasure, as a soldier by the sense of pain. Nothing
good can be done without intense feeling ; but it must be
feeling so crushed that the work is set about with mechan-
ical steadiness, absolutely untroubled, as a surgeon — not
without pity, but conquering it and putting it aside —
begins an operation. Until the feelings can give strength
enough to the will to enable it to conquer them, they are
not strong enough. If you cannot leave your picture at
any moment ; — cannot turn from it and go on with another,
while the colour is drying; — cannot work at any part of it
you choose, with equal contentment — you have not firm
enough grasp of it.
§ 21. It follows, also, that no vain or selfish person can
possibly paint, in the noble sense of the word. Vanity
and selfishness are troublous, eager, anxious, petulant : —
painting can only be done in calm of mind. Resolution is
not enough to secure this ; it must be secured by dispo-
sition as well. You may resolve to think of your picture
only ; but, if you have been fretted before beginning, no
manly, or clear grasp of it will be possible for you. JSTo
forced calm is calm enough. Only honest calm, — natural
calm. You might as well try by external pressure to
smoothe a lake till it could reflect the sky, as by violence
of effort to secure the peace through which only you can
reach imagination. That peace must come in its own
time ; as the waters settle themselves into clearness as well
as quietness ; you can no more filter your mind into purity
than you can compress it into calmness ; you must keep it
pure, if you would have it pure ; and throw no stones into
it, if you would have it quiet. Great courage and self-
command may, to a certain extent, give power of painting
without the true calmness underneath; but never doing
first-rate work. There is sufficient evidence of this, in
PERFECTS ESS IN SKETCHING.
301
even what we know of great men, though of the greatest,
we nearly always know the least (and that necessarily;
they being very silent, and not much given to setting
themselves forth to questioners ; apt to be contemptuously
reserved, no less than unselfishly). But in such writings
and sayings as we possess of theirs, we may trace a quite
curious gentleness and serene courtesy. Rubens' letters
are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. Rey-
nolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of companions ; so
also Yelasquez, Titian, and Veronese.
§ 22. It is gratuitous to add that no shallow or petty per-
son can paint. Mere cleverness or special gift never made
an artist. It is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, de-
cision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which
wTill form the imagination.
§ 23. And, lastly, no false person can paint. A person
false at heart may, when it suits his purpose, seize a stray
truth here and there ; but the relations of truth — its per-
fectness— that which makes it wholesome truth, he can
never perceive. As wholeness and wliolesomeness go to-
gether, so also sight with sincerity ; it is only the constant
desire of, and submissiveness to truth, which can measure
its strange angles and mark its infinite aspects ; and fit
them and knit them into the strength of sacred invention.
Sacred, I call it deliberately ; for it is thus, in the most
accurate senses, humble as well as helpful ; meek in its
receiving, as magnificent in its disposing ; the name it
bears being rightly given to invention formal, not because
it forn is, but because it finds. For you cannot find a lie •
you must make it for yourself. False things may be im-
agined, and false things composed ; but only truth can
be invented. Nature is never false. 5 M. P., 191.
CHAPTER VI.
OF THE FOREGROUND.
I. R,och and Soil Foregrounds. — We have now to ob-
serve the close characteristics of the rocks and soils.
1. There exists a marked distinction between those strati-
fied rocks, whose beds are amorphous and without sub-
division, as many limestones and sandstones, and those
which are divided by lines of lamination, as all slates.
The last kind of rock is the more frequent in nature, and
forms the greater part of all hill scenery ; it has, how-
ever, been successfully grappled with by few, even of
the moderns, except Turner ; while there is no single ex-
ample of any aim at it or thought of it among the ancients,
whose foregrounds, as far as it is possible to guess at their
intention through their concentrated errors, are chosen
from among the tufa and travertin of the lower Apennines
(the ugliest as well as the least characteristic rocks of na-
ture), and whose larger features of rock scenery, if we
look at them with a predetermination to find in them a re-
semblance of something, may be pronounced at least liker
the mountain limestone than anything else. I shall glance,
therefore, at the general characters of these materials first,
in order that we may be able to appreciate the fidelity of
rock-drawing on which Salvator's reputation has been built.
Of all foregrounds, one of loose stone is most difficult to
draw. 4M. P., 303.
2. The massive limestones separate generally into irregu-
lar blocks, tending to the form of cubes or parallelopipeds,
and terminated by tolerably smooth planes. The weather,
OF THE FOREGROUND.
303
acting on the edges of these blocks, rounds them off, but
the frost, which, while it cannot penetrate nor split the
body of the stone, acts energetically on the angles, splits
off the rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresh, and
complicated edges. Hence the angles of such blocks are
usually marked by a series of steps and fractures, in which
the peculiar character of the rock is most distinctly seen ;
the effect being increased in many limestones by the inter-
position of two or three thinner beds between the large
strata of which the block has been a part ; these thin lami-
nae breaking easily, and supplying a number of fissures
and lines of the edge of the detached mass. Thus, as a
general principle, if a rock have character anywhere, it
will he on the angle, and however even and smooth its
great planes may he, it will usually break into variety
where it turns a corner. In one of the most exquisite
pieces of rock truth ever put on canvas, the foreground of
the Napoleon in the Academy, 1842, this principle was
beautifully exemplified in the complicated fractures of the
upper angle just where it turned from the light, while the
planes of the rock were varied only by the modulation
they owed to the waves. It follows from this structure
that the edges of all rock being partially truncated, first by
large fractures, and then by the rounding of the fine edges
of these by the weather, perpetually present convex transi-
tions from the light to the dark side, the planes of the rock
almost always swelling a little from the angle.
3. Now it will be found throughout the works of Salvator,
that his most usual practice was to give a concave sweep
of the brush for his first expression of the dark side, leav-
ing the paint darkest towards the light; by which daring
and original method of procedure he has succeeded in
covering his foregrounds with forms which apru'oximate
to those of drapery, of ribbons, of crushed cocked hats, gf
locks of hair, of waves, leaves, or anything, in short, flexible
304
OF THE FOREGROUND.
or tough, but which of course are not only unlike, but
directly contrary to the forms which nature has impressed
on rocks.* And the circular and sweeping strokes or stains
which are dashed at random over their surfaces, only fail
of destroying all resemblance whatever to rock structure
from their frequent want of any meaning at all, and from
the impossibility of our supposing any of them to be rep-
resentative of shade.
4. Now, if there be any part of landscape in which
nature developes her principles of light and shade
more clearly than another, it is rock ; for the dark sides
of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the
lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are marked
with the most exquisite precision, especially because,
owing to the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie
usually in directions nearly parallel. Hence every crack
and fissure has its shadow and reflected light sepa-
rated with the most delicious distinctness, and the organi-
zation and solid form of all parts are told with a decision
of language, which, to be followed with anything like
fidelity, requires the most transparent colour, and the
most delicate and scientific drawing. So far are the
* I have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the angular
character of rocks, — not because it was false, but because it was incom-
plete, and I cannot explain it nor complete it without example. It is
not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of hardness through curves,
and of the under tendencies of the inward structure, which form the
true chacteristics of rock form : and Salvator, whom neither here or
elsewhere I have abused enough, is not wrong because he paints curved
rocks, but because his curves are the curves of ribbons and not of rocks ;
and the differeuce between rock curvature and other curvature I cannot
explain verbally, but I hope to do it hereafter by illustration ; and, at
present, let the reader study the rock- drawing of the Mont St. Gothard
subject, in the Liber Studiorum, and compare it with any examples of
Salvator to which he may happen to have access. All the account of
rocks here given is altogether inadequate, and I only do not alter it
because I first wish to give longer study to the subject.
OF THE FOREGROUND.
305
works of the old landscape-painters from rendering this,
that it is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in
which the shadow can even be distinguished from the
dark side — they scarcely seem to know the one to be
darker than the other ; and the strokes of the brush are
not used to explain or express a form known or conceived,
but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond
the covering of the canvas. " A rock," the old masters
appear to say to themselves, " is a great irregular, form-
less, characterless lump ; but it must have shade upon it,
and any grey marks will do for that shade."
5. Finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are
untra versed by delicate and slender fissures, whose black
sharp lines are the only means by which the peculiar qua-
lity in which rocks most differ from the other objects of
the landscape, brittleness, can be effectually suggested, we
look in vain among the blots and stains with which the
rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appear-
ance of fissure or splintering. Toughness and malleabil-
ity appear to be the qualities whose expression is most
aimed at ; sometimes sponginess, softness, flexibility, tenu-
ity, and occasionally transparenc}7. Take, for instance,
the foreground of Salvator, in No. 220 of the Dulwich
Gallery. There is, on the right-hand side of it, an object,
which I never walk through the room without contem-
plating for a minute or two with renewed solicitude and
anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and
imaginative conjectures as to its probable or possible
meaning. I think there is reason to suppose that the
artist intended it either for a very large stone, or for the
trunk of a tree ; but any decision as to its being either one
or the other of these must, I conceive, be the extreme of
rashness. It melts into the ground on one side, and might
reasonably he conjectured to form a part of it, having no
trace of woody structure or colour ; but on the other side
306
OF THE FOREGROUND.
it presents a series of concave curves, interrupted by cogs
like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest theorist
would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing
Symbolical of rock. The forms which this substance,
whatever it be, assumes, will be found repeated, though in
a less degree, in the foreground of No. 159, where they
are evidently meant for rock.
6. Let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the
faithful, scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which
we find in the works of Clarkson Stanfield. He is a man
especially to be opposed to the old masters, because he usu-
ally confines himself to the same rock subjects as they —
the mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary for-
mation which arrange themselves more or less into broad
and simple masses ; and in the rendering of these it is
impossible to go beyond him. Nothing can surpass his
care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct
and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained,
never confusing it with local colour, however richly his
surface-texture may be given ; while the wonderful play
of line with which he will vary, and through which he
will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is almost as
instructive as that of nature herself. I cannot point to
any of his works as better or more characteristic than
others ; but his Isehia, in the present British Institution,
may be taken as a fair average example. The Botallack
Mine, Cornwall, engraved in the Coast Scenery, gives us a
rery finished and generic representation of rock, whose
primal organization has been violentlj7 affected by external
influences. We have the stratification and cleavage indi-
cated at its base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and
decisive, disguised gradually as it rises by the rounding
of the surface and the successive furrows caused by the
descent of streams. But the exquisite drawing of the
foreground is especially worthy of notice. No huge con-
OF THE FOREGROUND.
307
cave sweeps of the brush, no daubing or splashing here.
Every inch of it is brittle and splintery, and the fissures
are explained to the eye by the most perfect, speaking
light and shade, — we can stumble over the edges of them.
The East Cliff, Hastings, is another very fine example,
from the exquisite irregularity with which its squareness
of general structure is varied and disguised. Observe
how totally contrary every one of its lines is to the absurd-
ities of Salvator. Stanfield's are all angular and straight,
every apparent curve made up of right lines, while Salva-
tor's are all sweeping and flourishing like so much pen-
manship. Stanfield's lines pass away into delicate splin-
tery fissures. Salvator's are broad daubs throughout.
Not one of Stanfield's lines is like another. Every one
of Salvator's mocks all the rest. All Stanfield's curves,
where his universal angular character is massed, as on the
left-hand side, into large sweeping forms, are convex.
Salvator's are every one concave.
7. The foregrounds of J. D. Harding and rocks of his
middle distances are also thoroughly admirable. He is
not quite so various and undulating in his line as Stan-
field, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is wanting in
solidity, owing to a little confusion of the dark side and
shadow with each other, or with the local colour. But
his work, in near passages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged
rock, is absolute perfection, excelling Stanfield in the per-
fect freedom and facility with which his fragments are
splintered and scattered; true in every line without the
least apparent effort. Stanfield's best works are laborious,
but Harding's rocks fall from under his hand as if they had
just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant into
lovely form. In colour also he incomparably surpasses
Stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his
grey. The rich, lichenous, and changeful warmth, and
delicate weathered greys of Harding's rock, illustrated as
308
OF THE FOREGROUND.
they are by the most fearless, firm, and unerring drawing,
render his wild pieces of torrent shore the finest things, next
to the work of Turner, in English foreground art.
J. B. Pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone
rock, and expresses it clearly and forcibly ; but it is much
to be regretted that this clever artist appears to be losing
all sense of colour and is getting more and more mannered
in execution, evidently never studying from nature except
with the previous determination to Pynize everything.*
8. Before passing to Turner, let us take one more glance
at the foregrounds of the old masters, with reference, not
to their management of rock, which is comparatively a rare
component part of their foregrounds, but to the common
soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and
whose forms and appearances are the same all over the
world. A steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that has
been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though
it may not be three feet high, features capable of giving
* A passage which I happened to see in an Essay of Mr. Pyne's, in the
Art-Union, about nature's "foisting rubbish" upon the artist, suffi-
ciently explains the cause of this decline. If Mr. Pyne will go to
nature, as ah great men have done, and as all men who mean to be
great must do, that is not merely to be helped, but to be taught by her ;
and will once or twice take her gifts, without looking them in the
mouth, he will most assuredly find — and I say this in no unkind or
depreciatory feeling, for I should say the same of all artists who are in
the habit of only sketching nature, and not studying her — that her worst
is better than his best. I am quite sure that if Mr. Pyne, or any other
painter who has hitherto been very careful in his choice of subject, will
go into the next turnpike-road, and taking the first four trees that he
comes to in the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them leaf for
leaf, as far as may be, and even their smallest boughs, with as much
care as if they were rivers, or an important map of a newly-surveyed
country, he will find when he has brought them all home, that at least
three out of the four are better than the best he ever invented. Compare
Part III. Sect. I. Chap. III. § 12, 13 (the reference in the note ought
to be Chap. XV. § 7.)
OF THE FOREGROUND.
309
high gratification to a careful observer. It is almost a
fae-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing
rock ; it possesses nearly as much variety of character,
and is governed by laws of organization no less rigid. It
is furrowed in the first place by undulating lines, by the
descent of the rain, little ravines, which are cut precisely
at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave
ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beauti-
fully sharp in their chiselling. Where a harder knot of
ground or a stone occurs, the earth is washed from be-
neath it, and accumulates above it, and there we have a
little precipice connected by a sweeping, curve at its sum-
mit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark sha-
dow ; where the soil has been soft, it will probably be
washed away underneath until it gives way, and leaves a
jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture ; and all these
circumstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with
the most delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being
expressive of some particular truth of structure, and bear-
ing witness to the symmetry into which the whole mass
has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on
long, and vegetation has assisted in softening outlines, we
have oui* ground brought into graceful and irregular
curves, of infinite variet}^, but yet always so connected
with each other, and guiding to each other, that the eye
never feels them as separate things, nor feels inclined to
count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to another ;
they are not repetitions of each 'other, but are different
parts of one system. Each would be imperfect without
the one next to it.
9. Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the
particulars wherein this fine character of curve consists,
and to show, in definite examples, what it is which makes
one representation right, and another wrong. The ground
of Ten iers, for instance, in No. 139 in the Dulwich Gallery,
310
OF THE FOEEGEOTTND.
is an example of all that is wrong. It is a representation
of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as we
should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the
ruins of fallen buildings. It has not one contour nor
character of the soil of nature, and yet I can scarcely tell
you why, except that the curves repeat one another, and
are monotonous in their now, and are unbroken by the
delicate angle and momentary pause with which the feel-
ing of nature would have touched them, and are disunited ;
so that the eye leaps from this to that, and does not pass
from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on
by the continuity of line; neither is there any undulation
or furrowing of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the
whole surface, is there distinct explanation of form to the
eye by means of a determined shadow. All is mere
sweeping of the brush over the surface with various ground
colours, without a single indication of character by means
of real shade.
10. Let not these points be deemed unimportant ; the
truths of form in common ground are quite as valuable
(let me anticipate myself for a moment), quite as beautiful,
as any others which nature presents, and in lowland land-
scape they present us with a species of line which it is
quite impossible to obtain in any other way, — the alter-
nately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery, which,
however small its scale, is always of inestimable value,
contrasted with the repetitions of organic form which we
are compelled to give in vegetation. A really great artist
dwells on every inch of exposed soil with care and delight,
and renders it one of the most essential, speaking and
pleasurable parts of his composition. And be it remem-
bered, that the man who, in the most conspicuous part of
his foreground, will violate truth with every stroke of the
pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts of it ;
and that in the little bits which I fix upon for animad-
OF THE FOREGROUND.
311
version, I am not pointing out solitary faults, but only the
most characteristic examples of the falsehood which is
everywhere, and which renders the whole foreground one
mass of contradictions and absurdities.
11. Nor do I myself see wherein the great difference lies
between a master and a novice, except in the rendering of
the finer truths, of which I am at present speaking. To han-
dle the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with ac-
curacy enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments
which a year or two's practice will give any man ; but to
trace among the grass and weeds those mysteries of inven-
tion and combination, by which nature appeals to the intel-
lect— to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve,
and undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle
and fine finger, like the touch of the rain itself — to find even
in all that appears most trifling or contemptible, fresh evi-
dence of the constant working of the Divine power " for
glory and for beauty," and to teach it and proclaim it to
the unthinking and the unregardless — this, as it is the
peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is
the peculiar duty which is demanded of it by the Deity.
12. It would take me no reasonable nor endurable time,
if I were to point out one half of the various kinds and
classes of falsehood which the inventive faculties of the
old masters succeeded in originating, in the drawing of
foregrounds. It is not this man, nor that man, nor one
school nor another ; all agree in entire repudiation of
everything resembling facts, and in the high degree of
absurdity of what they substitute for them. Even Cuvp,
who evidently saw and studied near nature, as an artist
should do — not fishing for idealities, but taking what
nature gave him, and thanking her for it — even he appears
to have supposed that the drawing of the earth might be
trusted to chance or imagination, and, in consequence,
Btrews his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones.
312
OF THE FOREGROUND.
13. Perhaps, however, the " beautiful foregrounds " of
Claude afford the most remarkable instances of childishness
and incompetence of all. That of his morning landscape,
with the large group of trees and high single-arched
bridge, in the National Gallery, is a pretty fair example
of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. I
will not say anything of the agreeable composition of the
three banks, rising one behind another from the water. I
merely affirm that it amounts to a demonstration that all
three were painted in the artist's study, without any ref-
erence to nature whatever. In fact, there is quite enough
intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing
that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon them,
amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their sur-
faces, the more evidently false because the leaves of the
trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly visible
and distinct ; and that the sharp lines with which each
cuts against that beyond it, are not only such as crumb-
ling earth could never show or assume, but are main-
tained through their whole progress ungraduated, un-
changing, and unaffected by any of the circumstances
of varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is
inevitably subjected. In fact, the whole arrangement is
the impotent' struggle of a tyro to express, by successive
edges, that approach of earth which he finds himself in-
capable of expressing by the drawing of the surface.
Claude wished to make you understand that the edge of
his pond came nearer and nearer : he had probably often
tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only
varied by the delicate and harmonized anatomy of nature ;
and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the
laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invariably
ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round O,
and making it look perpendicular. Much comfort and
solace of mind, in such unpleasant circumstances, may bj
OF THE FOREGROOTD. 313
derived from instantlv dividing the obnoxious bank into
a number of successive promontories, and developing their
edges with completeness and intensity. Every school-
girl's drawing, as soon as her mind had arrived at so great
a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that perpendicu-
lar water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying in-
stances of this unfailing resource ; and this foreground of
Claude's is only one out of the thousand cases in which
he has been reduced to it.
. 14. And if it be asked, how the proceeding differs from
that of nature, I have only to point to nature herself, as
she is drawn in the foreground of Turner's Mercury and
Argus, a case precisely similar to Claude's, of earthy crum-
bling banks cut away by water. It will be found in this
picture (and I am now describing nature's work and Turner's
with the same words) that the whole distance is given by
retirement of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is ex-
pressed, it is only felt for an instant, and then lost again;
so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for a long
jump to another like it, but is guided over it, and round it,
into the hollow beyond ; and thus the whole receding mass
of ground, going back for more than a quarter of a mile, is
made completely one — no part of it is separated from the
rest for an instant — it is all united, and its modulations
are members, not divisions of its mass. But those modu-
lations are countless — heaving here, sinking there — now
swelling, now mouldering, now blending, now breaking —
giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master,
precisely the same qualities which we have before seen in
his hills, as Claude gave to his foreground precisely the
same qualities which we had before found in his hills, —
infinite unity, in the one case, finite division in the other.
15. Let us, then, having now obtained some insight into
the principles of the old masters in foreground drawing,
contrast them throughout with those of our great modern
14
314
OF THE FOREGROUND.
master. The investigation of the excellence of Turner's
drawing becomes shorter and easier as we proceed, because
the great distinctions between his work and that of other
painters are the same, whatever the object or subject may
be ; and after once showing the general characters of the
particular specific forms under consideration, we have only
to point, in the works of Turner, to the same principles of
infinity and variety in carrying them out, which we have
before insisted upon with reference to other subjects.
16. The Upper Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire, engraved in
the England series, may be given as a standard example of
rock-drawing to be opposed to the work of Salvator. "We
have, in the great face of rock which divides the two
streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction
of the strata, and these same lines are given in ascending
perspective all along the precipice on the right. But we
see also on the central precipice fissures absolutely vertical,
which inform us of one series of joints dividing these hori-
zontal strata ; and the exceeding smoothness and evenness
of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused by
a great separation of substance in the. direction of another
more important line of joints, running in a direction across
the river. Accordingly, we see on the left that the whole
summit of the precipice is divided again and again by this
great series of joints into vertical beds, which lie against
each other with their sides towards us, and are traversed
downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face
of the central cliff. Now, let me direct especial attention
to the way in which Turner has marked over this general
and grand unity of structure, the modifying effects of the
weather and the torrent. Observe how the whole surface
of the hill above the precipice on the left* is brought into
* In the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on the
extreme right.
OF THE FOREGROUND.
315
one smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until
it comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the
angle (compare 2.), breaks into the multiplicity of fissure
which marks its geological structure. Observe how every
one of the separate blocks, into which it divides, is rounded
and convex in its salient edges turned to the weather, and
how every one of their inward angles is marked clear and
sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex.
Observe how exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the
convex surfaces, indicating that every one of them has
been modelled by the winding and undulating of running
water ; and how gradually they become steeper as they
descend, until they are torn down into the face of the
precipice. Finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the
touches which express fissure or shade; every one in
varying directions and with new forms, and yet throughout
indicating that perfect parallelism which at once explained
to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand
mass, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade
which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the fea-
tures of the human face ; which, though each has its own
separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the wholeness and
grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or mass. So
here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the
greatest proximity of the rounded mass ; and from this
every shade becomes fainter and fainter, until all are lost
in the obscurity and dimness of the hanging precipice and
the shattering fall. Again, see how the same fractures
just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above
the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told
us by the confusion of debris accumulated in its channel.
In fact, the great quality about Turner's drawings which
more especially proves their transcendent truth, is the
capability they afford us of reasoning on past and future
phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us;
316
OF THE FOREGROUND.
for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another,
not that a pretty or interesting morsel has been selected
here and there, but that the whole truth has been given,
with all the relations of its parts ; so that we can pick and
choose our points of pleasure or of thought for ourselves,
and reason upon the whole with the same certainty which
we should after having climbed and hammered over the
rocks bit by bit. With this drawing before him, a geolo-
gist could give a lecture upon the whole system of aqueous
erosion, and speculate as safely upon the past and future
states of this very spot, as if he were standing and getting
wet with the spray. He would tell you, at once, that the
waterfall was in a state of rapid recession; that it had
once formed a wide cataract just at the spot where the
figure is sitting on the heap of debris ; and that when it
was there, part of it came down by the channel on the left,
its bed being still marked by the delicately chiselled lines
of fissure. He would tell you that the foreground had
also once been the top of the fall, and that the vertical
fissures on the right of it were evidently then the channel
of a side stream. He would tell you that the fall was
then much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it
had less force, and cut itself a narrower bed ; and that
the spot where it reached the higher precipice is marked
by the expansion of the wide basin which its increased
violence has excavated, and by the gradually increasing
concavity of the rocks below, which we see have been
hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the
water. But neither he nor I could tell you with what
exquisite and finished marking of every fragment and
particle of soil or rock, both in its own structure and the
evidence it bears of these great influences, the whole of
this is confirmed and carried out.
17. With this inimitable drawing we may compare the
rocks in the foreground of the Llanthony. These latter
OF THE FOREGROUND.
317
are not divided by joints, but into thin horizontal and
united beds, which the torrent in its times of flood has
chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with
the sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges. And
here we have an instance of an exception to a general
rule, occasioned by particular and local action. We have
seen that the action of water over any surface universally,
whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, in-
duces convexity of form. But when we have rocks in situ
as here, exposed at their edges to the violent action of an
eddy, that eddy will cut a vault or circular space for
itself (as we saw on a large scale with the high water-
fall), and we have a concave curve interrupting the
general contours of the rock. And thus Turner (while
every edge of his masses is rounded, and, the moment we
rise above the level of the water, all is convex) has inter-
rupted the great contours of his strata with concave
curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have
swept against the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing
could more strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge
by which every touch of this consummate artist is regu-
lated, that universal command of subject which never acts
for a moment on anything conventional or habitual, but
fills every corner and space with new evidence of knowl-
edge, and fresh manifestation of thought.
18. The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge,
might serve us for an illustration of all the properties and
forms of vertical beds of rocks, as the upper fall has of
horizontal ; but we pass rather to observe, in detached
pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts
which cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of
general mass.
The blocks of stone which form the foreground of the
Ulles water are, I believe, the finest example in the world
of the finished drawing of rocks which have been sub-
318
OF THE FOREGKOTJND.
jected to violent aqueous action. Their surfaces seem to
palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every part
of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depres-
sion, though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows
on which this chiselling of the surface depends. And
with all this, every block of them has individual charac-
ter, dependent on the expression of the angular lines of
which its contours were first formed, and which is retained
and felt through all the modulation and melting of the
water-worn surface. And what is done here in the most
important part of the picture, to be especially attractive
to the eye, is often done by Turner with lavish and over-
whelming power, in the accumulated debris of a wide
foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for in-
stance, in the Junction of the Greta and Tees, where he
has choked the torrent bed with a mass of shattered rock,
thrown down with the profusion and carelessness of
nature herself ; and yet every separate block is a study
(and has evidently been drawn from nature), chiselled
and varied in its parts, as if it were to be the chief mem-
ber of a separate subject; yet without ever losing, in a
single instance, its subordinate position, or occasioning,
throughout the whole accumulated multitude, the repeti-
tion of a single line.
I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new
conception, applied and exerted in the drawing of every
member of a confused and almost countlessly divided
system j about the most wonderful, as well as the most
characteristic passages of Turner's foregrounds. It is
done not less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the
individual parts of all his broken ground, as in examples
like these of separate blocks. The articulation of such a
passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we have
already spoken of at so great length, the Upper Fall of
the Tees, might serve us for a day's study, if we were to
OF THE FOREGROUND.
319
go into it part by part ; bat it is impossible to do this,
except with the pencil ; we can only repeat the same
general observations, about eternal change and unbroken
unity, and tell yon to observe how the eye is kept
throughout on solid and retiring surfaces, instead of
being thrown, as by Claude, on flat and equal edges.
You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work ; you are
everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back
on these — you cannot tell how — never taking a leap, but
progressing imperceptibly along the unbroken bank, till
you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the picture,
beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall.
19. Finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand
drawing of Penmaen llawr. may be taken as the standard
of the representation of soft soil modelled by descending
rain ; and may serve to show us how exquisite in character
are the resultant lines, and how full of every species of
attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are wise
enough, not to scorn the study of them. The higher the
mind, it may be taken as a universal rule, the less it will
scorn that which appears to be small or unimportant ; and
the rank of a painter may always be determined by ob-
serving how he uses, and with what respect he views the
minutiae of nature. Greatness of mind is not shown by
admitting small things, but by making small things great
under its influence. He who can take no interest in what
is small, will take false interest in what is great ; he
who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a mountain
ridiculous.
20. It is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with
these simple facts of form, as they are illustrated by the
slighter works of Turner, that we can become at all com-
petent to enjoy the combination of all, in such works as
the Mercury and Argus, or Bay of Baise, in which the
mind is at first bewildered by the abundant outpouring
320
OF THE FOKEGEOUND.
of the master's knowledge. Often as I have paused be-
fore these noble works, I never felt on returning to them
as if I had ever seen them before ; for their abundance is
so deep and various that the mind, according to its own
temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of
truths rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a
natural scene ; and detects new relations and associations
of these truths which set the whole picture in a different
light at every return to it. And this effect is especially
caused by the management of the foreground; for the
more marked objects of the picture may be taken one by
one, and thus examined and known ; but the foregrounds
of Turner are so united in all their parts that the eye can-
not take them by divisions, but is guided from stone to
stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths totally differ-
ent in aspect, according to the direction in which it ap-
proaches them, and approaching them in a different direc-
tion, and viewing them as a part of a new system, every
time that it begins its course at a new point.
21. One lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all,
however approached or viewed, — that the work of the Great
Spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest
as in the noblest objects, — that the Divine mind is as visible
in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and
mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven,
and settling the foundation of the earth ; and that to the
rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the
same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the
same perfection, manifest in the casting of the clay as in
the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust
as in the kindling of the day-star. 1 M. P., 305.
II. The botanical Foregrounds of the Ancients. — The
great masters of Italy, a1 most without exception, and Titian
perhaps more than any other (for he had the highest
OF THE FOREGROUND.
321
knowledge of landscape), are in the constant habit of ren-
dering every detail of their foregrounds with the most
laborious botanical fidelity ; witness the " Bacchus and
Ariadne," in which the foreground is occupied by the
common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose ; every
stamen of which latter is given, while the blossoms and
leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have
been studied with the most exquisite accuracy. The fore-
grounds of Raffaelie's two cartoons — " The Miraculous
Draught of the Fishes " and " The Charge to Peter " — are
covered with plants of the common sea-colewort, of which
the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have
exhausted the patience of any other artist, but have ap-
peared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labour to the
great mind of Kaffaelle. Pref. 2d Ed. 1 M. P., xxvii.
14*
CHAPTER TIL
BACKGROUNDS.
1. Conventional or Mediaeval Backgrounds are of a very
formal kind. The painters took an infinite delight in
drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining
them completely ; the sky is always blue, having only a
few delicate white clouds in it, and in the distance are
blue mountains, very far away, if the landscape is to be
simply delightful; but brought near, and divided into
quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be medita-
tive, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the whole of it
always — flowers, brooks, castles, clouds, and rocks — subor-
dinate to the figures in the foreground, and painted for no
other end than that of explaining their adventures and
occupations.
2. Before the idea of Landscape had been thus far de-
veloped, the representations of the background had been
purely typical; the objects which had to be shown in
order to explain the scene of the event, being firmly out-
lined, usually on a pure golden or chequered background,
not on sky. The change from the golden background (char-
acteristic of the finest thirteenth-century work) and the
coloured chequer (which in like manner belongs to the
finest fourteenth) to the blue sky, gradated to the horizon,
takes place early in the fifteenth century, and is the crisis
of change in the spirit of mediaeval art. Strictly speaking,
we might divide the art of Christian times into two great
masses — Symbolic or conventional, and Imitative, the sym-
bolic reaching from the earliest periods down to the close
of the fourteenth century, and the imitative from that
BACKGROUNDS.
823
close to the present time ; and, then, the most important
circumstance indicative of the culminating point, or turn of
tide, would be this of the change from chequered back-
ground to sky background. The uppermost figure, Plate
I. (frontispiece), representing the tree of knowledge, taken
from a somewhat late thirteenth-century manuscript, will
at once illustrate the mode of introducing the chequer
background.
3. The moment sky is introduced (and it is curious how
perfectly it is done at once, many manuscripts presenting
in alternate pages chequered backgrounds and deep blue
skies exquisitely gradated to the horizon) the moment the
sky is introduced, the spirit of art becomes ever more
changed, and gradually it proposes imitation instead of
symbolism, more and more as an end. 3 M. P., 209.
II. Imitative Backgrounds. — It will be remembered that
our mediaeval landscape was in a state of severe formality,
and perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject.
I will now rapidly trace the mode and progress of its
emancipation.
1. The formalized conception of scenery remained little
altered until the time of Raphael, being only better exe-
cuted as the knowledge of art advanced ; that is to say,
though the trees were still stiff, and often set one on each
side of the principal figures, their colour and relief on the
sky were exquisitely imitated, and all groups of near leaves
and flowers drawn with the most tender care and studious
botanical accuracy. The better the subjects were painted,
however, the more logically absurd they became : a back-
ground wrought in Chinese confusion of towers and rivers
was in early times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for
the sake of its pleasant colour; but it appealed somewhat
too far to imaginative indulgence when Ghirlandajo drew
an exquisite perspective view of Venice and her lagoons
324
BACKGROUNDS.
behind an Adoration of the Magi ;* and the impossibly
small boats which might be pardoned in a mere illumina-
tion, representing the miraculous draught of fishes, became,
whatever may be said to the contrary, inexcusably absurd
in Raphael's fully realized landscape; so as at once to
destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the event.
2. A certain charm, however, attached itself to many
forms of this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness,
as I have endeavoured to explain already in the last chapter
of the second volume, §§ 9 to 12 ; noting, however, there,
that it was in nowise to be made a subject of imitation ;
a cob elusion which I have since seen more and more
ground for holding finally. The longer I think over the
subject, the more I perceive that the pleasure we take in
such unnatural landscapes is intimately connected with
our habit of regarding the New Testament as a beautiful
poem, instead of a statement of plain facts. He who
believes thoroughly that the events are true will expect,
and ought to expect, real olive copse behind real Madonna,
and no sentimental absurdities in either.
3. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take
(when I say we, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred
art) in such quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar false-
hood, and how far from its peculiar truth. For as it falls
into certain errors more boldly, so, also, what truth it states,
it states more firmly than subsequent work. No engrav-
ings, that I know, render the backgrounds of sacred
pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to judge
of this matter unless before the works themselves. I have,
therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the
background of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune of
the Uffizii, at Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf,
and the rest of the work with the best care I could ; the
* The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence.
BACKGROUNDS.
325
engraver, Mr. Armytage, has admirably rendered the
delicate atmosphere, which partly veils the distance. Now
I do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure as
we receive from this
landscape, that the trees
should be both so straight
and formal in stem, and
should have branches no
thicker than threads ; or
that the outlines of the
distant hills should ap-
proximate so closely to
those on any ordinary
Wedgewood's china pat-
tern. I know that, on the
contrary, a great part of
the pleasure arises from
the sweet expression of
air and sunshine; from
the traceable resemblance
of the city and tower to
Florence and Fesole ;
from the fact that, though
the boughs are too thin,
the lines of ramification
are true and beautiful ;
and from the expression of
continually varied form
in the clusters of leafage.
And although all lovers
of sacred art would
shrink in horror from the idea of substituting for such a
landscape a bit of Cuyp or Eubens, I do not think that the
horror they feel is because Cuyp and Eubens's landscape
is truer ^ but because it is coarser and more vulgar in asso-
Fig. 21.
326
BACKGROUNDS.
ciated idea than Raphael's ; and I think it possible that the
true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might
be tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael's with-
out giving offence to any one.
4. Take a somewhat more definite instance. The rock in
Fig. 21, on p. 325, is one put by Ghirlandajo into the back-
ground of his Baptism of Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlan-
dajo's own rocks and trees are better, in several respects,
than those here represented, since I have copied them from
one of Lasinio's execrable engravings ; still, the harsh out-
line, and generally stiff and uninventf ul blankness of the
design are true enough, and characteristic of all rock-paint-
ing of the period. In the plate opposite I have etched*
the outline of a fragment of one of Turner's cliffs, out of
his drawing of Bolton Abbey ; and it does not seem to me
that, supposing them properly introduced in the composi-
tion, the substitution of the soft natural lines for the hard
unnatural ones would make Ghirlandajo' s background one
whit less sacred.
5. But be this as it may, the fact is, as ill luck would
have it, that profanity of feeling, and skill in art, increased
together, so that we do not find the backgrounds rightly
painted till the figures become irreligious and feelingless ;
and hence we associate necessarily the perfect landscape
with want of feeling. The first great innovator was either
Masaccio or Filippino Lippi : their works are so confused
together in the Chapel of the Carmine, that I know not to
whom I may attribute, — or whether, without being imme-
diately quarrelled with, and contradicted, I may attribute
to anybody, — the landscape background of the fresco of
the Tribute Money. But that background, with one or
* This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next volume ;
it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in the water, than I
should have made it, if intended to be complete as it is.
9. The Shores of Wharfe.
BACKGROUNDS.
327
two other fragments in the same chapel, is far in advance
of all other work I have seen of the period, in expression
of the rounded contours and large slopes of hills, and the
association of their summits with the clouds. The opposite
engraving will give some better idea of its character than
can be gained from the outlines commonly published ;
though the dark spaces, which in the original are deep
blue, come necessarily somewhat too harshly on the eye
when translated into light and shade. I shall have occa-
sion to speak with greater speciality of this background in
examining the forms of hills ; meantime, it is only as an
isolated work that it can be named in the history of pic-
torial progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out
his purposes ; and the men around him were too ignorant
of landscape to understand or take advantage of the little
he had done. Raphael, though he borrowed from him in
the human figure, never seems to have been influenced by
his landscape, and retains either, as in Plate 8, the
upright formalities of Perugino; or, by way of being
natural, expands his distances into flattish flakes of hill,
nearly formless, as in the backgrounds of the Charge to
Peter and Draught of Fishes ; and thenceforward the
Tuscan and Roman schools grew more and more artificial,
and lost themselves finally under round-headed niches and
Corinthian porticos.
6. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains
and of the sea to brace the hearts of men to the develop-
ment of the true landscape schools. I sketched by chance
one evening the line of the Apennines from the ramparts
of Parma, and I have put the rough note of it, and the sky
that was over it, in Plate 11, and next to this (Plate 12)
a moment of sunset, behind the Euganean hills at Venice.
They have some interest here as types of the kind of scenes
which were daily set before the eyes of Correggio and
Titian, and of the sweet free spaces of sky through which
328
BACKGROUNDS.
rose and fell, to them, the coloured rays of the morning and
evening.
7. And they are connected, also, with the forms of land-
scape adopted by the Lombardic masters, in a very curious
way. We noticed that the Flemings, educated entirely in
flat land, seemed to be always contented with the scenery
it supplied ; and we should naturally have expected that
Titian and Correggio, living in the midst of the levels of
the lagoons, and of the plain of Lombardy, would also
have expressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in
such level scenery, associated,- of course, with the sub-
limity of the far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp.
But not a whit. The plains of mulberry and maize, of
sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded, never occur
in their backgrounds but in cases of necessity ; and both
of them, in all their important landscapes, bury them-
selves in wild wood ; Correggio delighting to relieve with
green darkness of oak and ivy the golden hair and snowy
flesh of his figures ; and Titian, whenever the choice of a
scene was in his power, retiring to the narrow glens and
forests of Cadore.
8. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall have to
speak at length in the course of the chapters on Foliage ;
meantime I give, in Plate 13, one of Titian's slightest bits
of background, from one of the frescoes in the little
chapel behind St. Antonio, at Padua, which may be com-
pared more conveniently than any of his more elaborate
landscapes with the purist work from Raphael. For in
both these examples the trees are equally slender and
delicate, only the formality of mediaeval art is, by Titian,
entirely abandoned, and the old conception of the aspen
grove and meadow done away with for ever. We are
now far from cities : the painter takes true delight in the
desert ; the trees grow wild and free ; the sky also has
lost its peace, and is writhed into folds of motion, closely
BACKGROUNDS.
329
impendent upon earth, and somewhat threatening, through
its solemn light.
9. Although, however, this example is characteristic of
Titian in its wildness, it is not so in its looseness. It is
only in the distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or
when he is in a hurry, that Titian is vague : in all his near
and studied work he completes every detail with scrupu-
lous care. The next Plate, 14, a background of Tintoret's,
from his picture of the Entombment at Parma, is more
entirely characteristic of the Venetians. Some mistakes
made in the reduction of my drawing during the course
of engraving have cramped the curves of the boughs and
leaves, of which I will give the true outline further on ;
meantime the subject, which is that described in § 16 of
the chapter on Penetrative Imagination, Yol. II., will
just as well answer the purpose of exemplifying the Vene-
tian love of gloom and wildness, united with perfect
definition of detail. Every leaf and separate blade of
grass is drawn ; but observe how the blades of grass are
broken, how completely the aim at expression of faultless-
ness and felicity has been withdrawn , as contrary to the
laws of the existent world.
10. From this great Venetian school of landscape Tur-
ner received much important teaching — almost the only
healthy teaching which he owed to preceding art. The
designs of the Liber Stucliorum are founded first on
nature, but in many cases modified by forced imitation of
Claude, and fond imitation of Titian. All the worst and
feeblest studies in the book — as the pastoral with the
nymph playing the tambourine, that with the long bridge
seen through trees, and with the flock of goats on the
walled road — owe the principal part of their imbecilities
to Claude ; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog,
Lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken with hardly any modification
by pictorial influence, straight from nature; and the finest
330
BACKGROUNDS.
works in the book— the Grande Chartreuse, Rizpah, Jason,
Cephalus, and one or two more — are strongly under
the influence of Titian.
II. The Yenetian school of landscape expired with
Tintoret, in the year 1594; and. the sixteenth century
closed, like a grave, over the great art of the world.
There is no entirely sincere or great art in the seven-
teenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt are its two
greatest men, both deeply stained by the errors and affec-
tations of their age. The influence of the Venetians
hardly extended to them ; the tower of the Titianesque
art fell southwards ; and on the dust of its ruins grew
various art-weeds, such as Domenichino and the Carraccis.
Their landscape, which may in few words be accurately
defined as " Scum of Titian," possesses no single merit,
nor any ground for the forgiveness of demerit ; they are
to be named only as the link through which the Venetian
influence came dimly down to Claude and Salvator.
3 M. P., 319-324:
III. 1. Light Backgrounds. — I think if there be any one
grand division, by which it is at all possible to set the pro-
ductions of painting, so far as their mere plan or system is
concerned, on our right and left hands, it is this of light
and dark background, of heaven light, or of object light.
For I know not any truly great painter of any time who
manifests not the most intense pleasure in the luminous
space of his backgrounds, or whoever sacrifices this plea-
sure where the nature of his subject admits of its attain-
ment, as on the other hand I know not that the habitual
use of dark backgrounds can be shown as having ever
been co-existent with pure or high feeling, and, except in
the case of Rembrandt (and then under peculiar circum-
stances only), with any high power of intellect. It is
however necessary carefully to observe the following
modifications of this broad principle.
BACKGROUNDS.
331
2. The absolute necessity, for such indeed I consider it,
is of no more than such a mere luminous distant point as
may give to the feelings a species of escape from all the
finite objects about them. There is a spectral etching of
Rembrandt, a presentation of Christ in the Temple, where
the figure of a robed priest stands glaring by its gems out
of the gloom, holding a crosier. Behind it there is a
subdued window light seen in the opening between two
columns, without which the impressiveness of the whole
subject would, I think, be incalculably brought down. I
cannot tell whether I am at present allowing too much
weight to my own fancies and predilections, but without
so much escape into the outer air and open heaven as this,
I can take permanent pleasure in no picture.
3. And I think I am supported in this feeling by the
unanimous practice, if not the confessed opinion, of all
artists. The painter of portrait is unhappy without his
conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or beside the
arm-chair ; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird
unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar;
the landscapist dares not lose himself in forest without a
gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures
out in rain unless he may somewhere pierce to a better
promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of
variable blue above ; — escape, hope, infinity, by whatever
conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the
instinct constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted
in the etching of Rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of
armour or fold of temple curtain would have been utterly
valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we cut down
hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we
choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless
and undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape
forward ; and however narrow and thorny and difficult
the nearer path, it matters not, so only that the clouds
332
BACKGROUNDS.
open for us at its close. Neither will any amount of
beauty in nearer form make us content to stay with it, so
long as we are shut down to that alone, nor is any form so
cold or so hurtful but that we may look upon it with
kindness, so only that it rise against the infinite hope of
light beyond. The reader can follow out the analogies of
this unassisted.
4. But although this narrow portal of escape be all that
is absolutely necessary, I think that the dignity of the
painting increases with the extent and amount of the ex-
pression. With the earlier and mightier painters of Italy,
the practice is commonly to leave their distance of pure
and open sky, of such simplicity, that it in nowise shall
interfere with or draw the attention from the interest of
the figures, and of such purity, that, especially towards the
horizon, it shall be in the highest degree expressive of the
infinite space of heaven. I do not mean to say that they
did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. They
did it, I think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity
of all earnest men ; they did what they loved and felt ;
they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what
it most gratefully receives ; and I look to' them as in
all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or
empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities,
precisely on account of the child-like innocence, which
never deemed itself authoritative, but acted upon desire,
and not upon dicta, and sought for sympathy, not for
admiration.
5. And so we find the same simple and sweet treatment,
the open sky, the tender, unpretending, horizontal Avhite
clouds, the far winding and abundant landscape, in Giotto,
Taddeo, Gaddi, Laurati, Angelico, Benozzo, Ghirlandajo,
Francia, Perugino, and the young Paffaelle, the first
symptom of conventionality appearing in Perugino, who.
though with intense feeling of light and colour he carried
BACKGROUNDS.
333
the glory of his luminous distance far beyond all his pre-
decessors, began at the same time to use a somewhat
morbid relief of his figures against the upper sky. Thus
in the Assumption of the Florentine Academy, in that of
l'Annunziata ; and of the Gallery of Bologna, in all which
pictures the lower portions are incomparably the finest,
owing to the light distance behind the heads. Raffaelle,
in his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his
father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky
of the Madonna del Cardellino, the chamber wall of the
Madonna della Sediola, and the brown wainscot of the
Baldacchino. Yet it is curious to observe how much of
the dignity even of his later pictures depends on such
portions as the green light of the lake, and sky behind the
rocks, in the St. John of the Tribune, and how the re-
painted distortion of the Madonna dell' Impannata, is
redeemed into something like elevated character, merely
by the light of the linen window from which it takes its
name.
6. That which by the Florentines was done in pure sim-
plicity of heart, was done by the Yenetians with intense
love of the colour and splendour of the sky itself, even to
the frequent sacrificing of their subject to the passion
of its distance. In Carpaccio, John Bellini, Giorgione,
Titian, Yeronese, and Tintoret, the preciousness of the
luminous sky, so far as it might be at all consistent with
their subject, is nearly constant ; abandoned altogether in
portraiture only, seldom even there, and never with
advantage. Titian and Yeronese, who had less exalted
feeling than the others, affording a few instances of ex-
ception, the latter overpowering his silvery distances with
foreground splendour, the other sometimes sacrificing them
to a luscious fulness of colour, as in the Flagellation in the
Louvre, by a comparison of which with the unequalled
majesty of the Entombment, opposite, the whole power
334
BACKGROUNDS.
and applicability of the general principle may at once be
tested.
7. But of the value of this mode of treatment there is a
farther and more convincing proof than its adoption either
by the innocence of the Florentine or the ardour of the
Venetian, namely, that when retained or imitated from
them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth century,
when appearing in isolation from all other good, among
the weaknesses and paltrinesses of Claude, the mannerisms
of Gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of Salvator,
it yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness
by its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts
an uncomprehended power of permanent address to the
human heart, upon the lips of the senseless and the pro-
fane.*
Now, although I doubt not that the general value of
this treatment will be acknowledged by all lovers of art,
it is not certain that the point to prove which I have
brought it forward, will be as readily conceded, namely, the
* In one of the smaller rooms of the Pitti palace, over the door, is a
temptation of St. Anthony, by Salvator, wherein such power as the
artist possessed is fully manifested, with little, comparatively, that is
offensive. It is a vigorous and ghastly thought, in that kind of horror
which is dependent on scenic effect, perhaps unrivalled, and I shall have ,
occasion to refer to it again in speaking of the powers of imagination. :
I allude to it here, because the sky of the distance affords a remarkable
instance of the power of light at present under discussion. It is formed
with flakes of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid
green, and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on
these openings. Close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the
spectre will be awful no longer. It owes to the light of the distance
both its size and its spirituality. The time would fail me if I were to
name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me whose vulgarity
is redeemed by this circumstance alone, and yet let not the artist trust to
such morbid and conventional use of it as may be seen in the common
blue and yellow effectism of the present day. Of the value of modera-
tion and simplicity in the use of this, as of all other sources of pleasur-
able emotion, I shall presently have occasion to speak farther.
J.p
13. Early Naturalism
BACKGROUNDS.
335
inherent power of all representations of infinity over the
human heart / for there are, indeed, countless associations
of pure and religious kind, which combine with each other
to enhance the impression, when presented in this partic-
ular form, whose power I neither deny nor am careful to
distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same Divine
point and have reference to heavenly hopes ; delights they
are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly
compared with the bright firmament, reachings forward
unto the things that are before, and joy fulness in the
apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of
them. 2M.P.,41.
8. Historical painters, accustomed to treat their back-
grounds slightly and boldly, and feeling that any ap-
proach to completeness of detail therein injures their
pictures by interfering with its principal subject, naturally
lose sight of the peculiar and intrinsic beauty of subordi-
nate things. Compare the background of Sir Joshua's
"Holy Family" with that of Xicolo Poussin's " Nursing
of Jupiter." The first, owing to all neglect of botanical
detail, has lost every atom of ideal character, and reminds
us of an English fashionable flower-garden ; Poussin's, in
which every vine-leaf is drawn with consummate skill
and untiring diligence, produces not only a tree group of
the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which, in its
pure and simple truth, belongs to every age of nature, and
adapts itself to the history of all time.
As to the backgrounds of the 13th, 14th, 15th, and
16th centuries, see Lecture 3d, on Architecture and Paint-
ing, delivered at Edinburgh, Xov. 1853,, page 123.
CHAPTER VIII.
DISTANCE.
Distance and Outline. — In Turner's distances two
facts are invariably given — transparency or filminess of
mass, and excessive sharpness of edge. Sharpness of edge
is the unfailing characteristic of distance. When the eye
is really directed to the distance, melting lines are
characteristic only of thick mist and vapour between us
and the object, not of the removal of the object. If a
thing has character upon its outline, as a tree for instance,
or a mossy stone, the farther it is removed from us the
sharper the outline of the whole mass will become, though
the details will become confused. A tree fifty yards from
us, taken as a mass, has a soft outline, because the leaves
and interstices have some effect on the eye. But put it
ten miles off against the sky, its outline will be so sharp
that you cannot tell it from a rock. So in a mountain
h've or six miles off, bushes, and heather, and roughness of
knotty ground and rock, have still some effect on the eye,
and by becoming confused and mingled soften the outline.
But let the mountain be thirty miles off, and its edge will
be as sharp as a knife. Let it, as in case of the Alps, be
seventy or eighty miles off, and though it has become so
faint that the morning mist is not so transparent, its out-
line will be beyond all imitation for sharpness. Thus,
then, the character of extreme distance is always exces-
sive sharpness of edge. If you soften your outline, you
either put mist between you and the object, and in doing
so diminish your distance, for it is impossible you should
see so far through mist as through clear air ; or if you
DISTANCE.
337
keep an impression of clear air, you bring the object close
to the observer, diminish its size in proportion, and if
aerial colours, excessive blues, &c, be retained, represent
an impossibility. Claude in his best expression of distance
uses pure blue as ever came from the pallet, laid on thick;
you cannot see through it, there is not the slightest vestige
of transparency or nlminess about it, and its edge is soft
and blunt. Hence if it be meant for near hills, the blue
is impossible, and the want of details impossible in the
clear atmosphere indicated through the whole picture. If
it be meant for extreme distance the blunt edge is impos-
sible, and the opacity is impossible. I do not know a
single distance of the Italian school to which the observa-
tion is not applicable, except, perhaps, one or two of
Nicholas Poussin. In Turner's pictures, observe the ex-
cessive sharpness of all the edges, almost amounting to
lines, in the distance, while there is scarcely one decisive
edge, in the foreground.
Such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest
peaks and extreme distance of all hills, as far as the form
of the rocks themselves, and the aerial appearances espe-
cially belonging to them alone, are concerned. (For colour
in distance, see p. 361.)
15
CHAPTER
IX.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS : EIEST AS DEPENDENT ON
THE EOCUS OF THE EYE.*
1. I haye noticed the distinction between real aerial per-
spective, and that overcharged contrast of light and shade
by which the old masters obtained their deceptive effect ;
and I show ed that, though inferior to them in the precise
quality or tone of aerial colour, our great modern master is
altogether more truthful in the expression of the propor-
tionate relation of all his distances to one another. I am
now about to examine those modes of expressing space,
both in nature and art by far the most important, which
are dependent, not on the relative hues of objects, but on
the drawing of them : by far the most important, I say,
because the most constant and certain ; for nature herself
is not always aerial. Local effects are frequent which in-
terrupt and violate the laws of aerial tone, and induce
strange deception in our ideas of distance. I have often
seen the summit of a snowy mountain look nearer than
its base, owing to the perfect clearness of the upper air.
But the drawing of objects, that is to say, the degree in
* I am more than ever convinced of the truth of the position ad-
vanced in the 8th paragraph ; nor can I at present assign any other
cause, than that here given, for what is there asserted ; and yet I can-
not but think that I have allowed far too much influence to a change
so slight as that which we insensibly make in the focus of the eye : and
that the real justification of Turner's practice, with respect to some of
his foregrounds, is to be elsewhere sought. I leave the subject, there-
fore, to the reader's consideration.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
which their details and parts are distinct or confused is
an unfailing and certain criterion of their distance ; and
if this be rightly rendered in a painting, we shall have
genuine truth of space, in spite of many errors in aerial
tone ; while, if this be neglected, all space will be de-
stroyed, whatever dexterity of tint may be employed to
conceal the defective drawing.
2. First, then, it is to he noticed, that the eye, like any
other lens, must have its focus altered, in order to convey
a distinct image of ohjects at different distances; so that
it is totally impossible to see distinctly, at the same mo-
ment, ttco objects, one of which is much farther off than
another. Of this, any one may convince himself in an in-
stant. Look at the bars of your window-frame, so as to get
a clear image of their lines and form, and you cannot, while
your eye is fixed on them, perceive anything but the most
indistinct and shadowy images of whatever objects may be
visible beyond. But fix your eyes on those objects, so as
to see them clearly, and though they are just beyond and
apparently beside the window-frame, that frame will only
be felt or seen as a vague, flitting, obscure interruption to
whatever is perceived beyond it. A little attention di-
rected to this fact will convince every one of its univer-
sality, and prove beyond dispute that objects at unequal
distances cannot be seen together, not from the interven-
tion of air or mist, but from the impossibility of the rays
proceeding from both converging to the same focus, so
that the whole . impression, either of one or the other,
must necessarily be confused, indistinct, and inadequate.
3. But, be it observed (and I have only to request that
whatever I say may be tested by immediate experiment) the
difference of focus necessary is greatest within the first
five hundred yards, and therefore, though it is totally im-
possible to see an object ten yards from the eye, and one a
quarter of a mile beyond it, at the same moment, it is per-
340
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
fectly possible to see one a quarter of a mile off, and oiig
rive miles beyond it, at the same moment. The conse-
quence of this is, practically, that in a real .landscape, we
can see the whole of what would he called the middle dis-
tance and distance together, with facility and clearness :
but while we do so we can see nothing in the foreground
beyond a vague and indistinct arrangement of lines and
colours ; and that if on the contrary, we look at any fore-
ground object, so as to receive a distinct impression of it,
the distance and middle distance become all disorder and
mystery.
4. And therefore, if in a painting our foreground is
anything, our distance must be nothing, and vice versa /
for if we represent our near and distant objects as giving
both at once that distinct image to the eye, which we receive
in nature from each, when we look at them separately ; *
and if we distinguish them from each other only by the
air-tone, and indistinctness dependent on positive distance,
we violate one of the most essential principles of nature ;
we represent that as seen at once which can only be seen
* This incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its incapa-
bility to comprehend a large portion of lateral space at once. We indeed
can see, at any one moment, little more than one point, the objects be-
side it being- confused and indistinct ; but we need pay no attention to
this in art, because we can see just as little of the picture as we can of
the landscape without turning the eye, and hence any slurring or con-
fusing of one part of it, laterally, more than another, is not founded on
any truth of nature, but is an expedient of the artist — and often an ex-
cellent and desirable one — to make the eye rest where he wishes it.
But as the touch expressive of a distant object is as near upon the canvas
as that expressive of a near one, both are seen distinctly and with the
same focus of the eye, and hence an immediate contradiction of nature
results, unless one or other be given with an artificial and increased in-
distinctness, expressive of the appearance peculiar to the unadapted
focus. On the other hand, it must be noted that the greater part of the
effect above described is consequent not on variation of focus, but on the
different angle at which near objects are seen by each of the two eyes,
when both are directed towards the distance.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
341
by two separate acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross
as if we had represented four sides of a cubic object vis-
ible together.
5. ]STow, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter
of the old school, as far as I remember, ever paid the slight-
est attention. Finishing their foregrounds clearly and
sharply, and with vigorous impression on the eye, giving
even the leaves of their bushes and grass with perfect
edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance with
equal attention to what they could see of its details — they
gave all that the eye can perceive in a distance, when it is
fully and entirely devoted to it, and therefore, though
masters of aerial tone, though employing every expedient
that art could supply to conceal the intersection of lines,
though caricaturing the force and shadow of near objects
to throw them close upon the eye, they never succeeded in
truly representing space.
6. Turner introditced a neio era in landscape art, by
shoiving that the foreground might be sunk for the dis-
tance, and that it was possible to express immediate
proximity to the spectator, without giving anything like
completeness to the forms of the near objects. This is
not done by slurred or soft lines, observe (alicays the
sign of vice in art), but by a decisive imperfection, a
firm, but partial assertion of form, which the eye feels to
be close home to it, and yet cannot rest upon, or cling to, nor
entirely understand, and from tvhich it is driven away of
necessity, to those parts of distance on which it is intended
to repose. And this principle, originated by Turner,
though fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted
on with judgment and success by several less powerful ar-
tists of the English school. Some six years ago, the brown
moorland foregrounds of Copley Fielding were very in-
structive in this respect. Not a line in them was made
out, not a single object clearly distinguishable. Wet broad
342
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
sweeps of the brash, sparkling, careless, and accidental as
nature herself, always truthful as far as they went, imply-
ing knowledge, though not expressing it, suggested every-
thing, while they represented nothing. But far off into
the mountain distance came the sharp edge and the deli-
cate form ; the whole intention and execution of the pic-
ture being guided and exerted where the great impression
of space and size was to be given. The spectator was
compelled to go forward into the waste of hills — there,
where the sun broke wide upon the moor, he must walk
and wander — he could not stumble and hesitate over the
near rocks^ nor stop to botanize on the first inches of his
path." And the impression of these pictures was always
great and enduring, as it was simple and truthful. I do
not know anything in art which has expressed more com-
pletely the force and feeling of nature in these particular
scenes. And it is a farther illustration f of the principle
we are insisting upon, that where, as in some of his later
works, he has bestowed more labour on the foreground, the
picture has lost both in space and sublimity. And among
artists in general, who are either not aware of the princi-
ple, or fear to act upon it (for it requires no small cour-
age, as well as skill, to treat a foreground with that indis-
tinctness and mystery which they have been accustomed
to consider as characteristic of distance), the foreground is
not only felt, as every landscape painter will confess, to be
the most embarrassing and unmanageable part of the pic-
ture, but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will go
* There is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what
was before asserted respecting- the necessity of botanical fidelity —
where the foreground is the object of attention. Compare Part II.
Sect. I. Chap. VII. § 10: — " To paint mist rightly, space rightly, and
light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly."
f Hardly. It would have been so only had the recently finished fore-
grounds been as accurate in detail as they are abundant ; they are pain-
ful, I believe, not from their finish, but their falseness.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
343
near to destroy the effect of the rest of the composition.
Thus Callcott's Trent is severely injured by the harsh
group of foreground figures ; and Stanfield very rarely
gets through an Academy picture without destroying
much of its space, by too much determination of near
form ; while Harding constantly sacrifices his distance,
and compels the spectator to dwell on the foreground al-
together, though indeed, with such foregrounds as he gives
us, we are most happy so to do.
7. But it is in Turner only that we see a bold and deci-
sive choice of the distance and middle distance, as his
great object of attention ; and by him only that the fore-
ground is united and adapted to it, not by any want of
drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of execution, but by
the most precise and beautiful indication or suggestion of
just so much of even the minutest forms as the eye can
see when its focus is not adapted to them. And herein
is another reason for the vigour and wholeness of the effect
of Turner's works at any distance ; while those of almost
all other artists are sure to lose space as soon as we lose
sight of the details.
8. And now we see the reason for the singular, and to the
ignorant in art, the offensive execution of Turner's figures.
I do not mean to assert that there is any reason whatso-
ever for had drawing (though in landscape it matters ex-
ceedingly little) ; but there is both reason and necessity for
that want of drawing which gives even the nearest figures
round balls with four pink spots in them instead of faces,
and four dashes of the brush instead of hands and feet ;
for it is totally impossible that if the eye be adapted to
receive the rays proceeding from the utmost distance,
and some partial impression from all the distances, it
should be capable of perceiving more of the forms and
features of near figures than Turner gives. And how ab-
solutely necessary to the faithful representation of space
344:
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
this indecision really is, might be proved with the utmost
ease by any one who had veneration enough for the artist
to sacrifice one of his pictures to his fame ; who would
take some one of his works in which the figures were
most incomplete, and have them painted in by any of our
delicate and first-rate figure-painters, absolutely preserv-
ing every colour and shade of Turner's group, so as not
to lose one atom of the composition, but giving eyes for
the pink spots, and feet for the white ones. Let the pic-
ture be so exhibited in the Academy, and even novices in
art would feel at a glance that its truth of space was gone,
that every one of its beauties and harmonies had under-
gone decomposition, that it was now a grammatical sole-
cism, a painting of impossibilities, a thing to torture the.
eye and offend the mind.
CHAPTER X.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS : SECONDLY, AS ITS APPEAR-
ANCE IS DEPENDENT ON THE POWER OF THE EYE.
1. In the last chapter, we have seen how in distinctness
of individual distances becomes necessary in order to ex-
press the adaptation of the eye to one or other of thern ;
we have now to examine that kind of indistinctness which
is dependent on real retirement of the object even when
the focus of the eye is fully concentrated upon it. The
first kind of indecision is that which belongs to all objects
which the eye is not adapted to, whether near or far off :
the second is that consequent upon the want of power in
the eye to receive a clear image of objects at a great dis-
tance from it, however attentively it may regard them.
Draw on a piece of white paper, a square and a circle,
each about a twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, and
blacken them so that their forms may be very distinct ;
place your paper against the wall at the end of the room,
and retire from it a greater or less distance according as
you have drawn the figures larger or smaller. You will
come to a point where, though you can see both the spots
with perfect plainness, you cannot tell which is the square
and which the circle.
2. Now this takes place of course with every object in a
landscape, in proportion to its distance and size. The
definite forms of the leaves of a tree, however sharply
and separately they may appear to come against the sky,
are quite indistinguishable at fifty yards off, and the form
of everything becomes confused before we finally lose
15"
346
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
sight of it. Now if the character of an object, say the
front of a house, be explained by a variety of forms in it,
as the shadows in the tops of the windows, the lines of the
architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc. ; these lesser
details, as the object falls into distance, become confused
and undecided, each of them losing their definite forms,
but all being perfectly visible as something, a white or a
dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, but yet so
seen that we cannot tell what they are. As the distance
increases, the confusion becomes greater, until at last the
whole front of the house becomes merely a flat, pale
space, in which, however, there is still observable a kind
of richness and checkering, caused by the details in it,
which, though totally merged and lost in the mass, have
still an influence on the texture of that mass ; until at last
the whole house itself becomes a mere light or dark spot
which we can plainly see, but cannot tell what it is, nor
distinguish it from a stone or any other object.
3. Now what I particularly wish to insist upon is the
state of vision in which all the details of an object are seen,
and yet seen in such confusion and disorder that we can-
not in the least tell what they are, or what they mean. It
is not mist between us and the object, still less is it shade,
still less is it want of character ; it is a confusion, a mys-
tery, an interfering of undecided lines with each other,
not a diminution of their number ; window and door,
architrave and frieze, all are there : it is no cold and va-
cant mass, it is full and rich and abundant, and yet you
cannot see a sino-le form so as to know what it is. Ob-
serve your friend's face as he is coming up to you ; first it
is nothing more than a white spot ; now it is a face, but
you cannot see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even as spots ;
yon see a confusion of lines, a something which you know
from experience to be indicative of a face, and yet you can-
not tell how it is so. Now he is nearer, and you can see
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
347
the spots for the eyes and mouth, but they are not blank
spots neither ; there is detail in them ; you cannot see the
lips, nor the teeth, nor the brows, and yet you see more
than mere spots ; it is a mouth and an eye, and there is
light and sparkle and expression in them, but nothing
distinct. Now he is nearer still, and you can see that he is
like your friend, but you cannot tell whether he is or not :
there is a vagueness and indecision of line still. Now you
are sure, but even yet there are a thousand things in his
face, which have their effect in inducing the recognition,
but which you cannot see so as to know what they are.
4. Changes like these, and states of vision corresponding
to them, take place with each and all of the objects of na-
ture, and two great principles of truth are deducible from
their observation. First, place an object as close to the
eye as you ldxe, there is always something in it which
you cannot see, except in the hinted and mysterious man-
ner above described. You can see the texture of a piece
of dress, but you cannot see the individual threads which
compose it, though they are all felt, and have each of
them influence on the eye. Secondly, place an object as
ear from the eye as you like, and until it becomes itself
a mere spot, there is always something in it which you can
see, though only in the hinted manner above described.
Its shadows and lines and local colours are not lost sight of
as it retires ; they get "mixed and indistinguishable, but
they are still there, and there is a difference always per-
ceivable between an object possessing such details and a
flat or vacant space. The grass blades of a meadow a mile
off, are so far discernible that there will be a marked
difference between its appearance and that of a piece of
wood painted green. And thus nature is never distinct
and never vacant, she is always mysterious, but always
abundant / you always see something, but you never see all.
And thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which
348
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
God has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh
pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye, — a finish
which no distance can render invisible, and no nearness
comprehensible ; which in every stone, every bough, every
cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, forever
presented, and forever exhaustless. And hence in art,
every space or touch in which we can see everything, or
in which we can see nothing, is false. .Nothing can be
true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is
false which does not suggest more than it represents, and
every space is false which represents nothing.
5. Now, I would not wish for any more illustrative or
marked examples of the total contradiction of these two
great principles, than the landscape works of the old
masters, taken as a body : — the Dutch masters furnishing
the cases of seeing everything, and the Italians of seeing
nothing. The rule with both is indeed the same, differ-
ently applied. " You shall see the bricks in the wall, and
be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but a dead
flat ; but the Dutch give you the bricks, and the Italians
the flat." Nature's rule being the precise reverse — " You
shall never be able to count the bricks, but you shall never
see a dead space."
6. Take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really
great landscape of Poussin (great in feeling at least)
marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery. The houses are
dead square masses with a light side and a dark side,
and black touches for windows. There is no suggestion
of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead
grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead
black. How differently would nature have treated us.
She would have let us see the Indian corn hanging on the
walls, and the image of the Virgin at the angles, and the
sharp, broken, broad shadows of the tiled eaves, and the
deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
340
Roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue
stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and
the flapping corners of the mat blinds. All would have
been there ; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor
tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a con-
fusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far
too fine for the eye to follow, microscopic in its minute-
ness, and filling every atom and part of space with mys-
tery, out of which would have arranged itself the general
impression of truth and life.
7. Again, take the distant city on the right bank of the
river in Claude's Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, in the
National Gallery. I have seen many cities in my life,
and drawn not a few ; and I have seen many fortifications,
fancy ones included, which frequently supply us with very
new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion ; but
I do not remember ever having met with either a city or
a fortress entirely composed of round towers of various
heights and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and abso-
lutely aoreein£ in the number of battlements. I have,
indeed, some faint recollection of having delineated such
an one in the first page of a spelling-book when I was four
years old ; but, somehow or other, the dignity and per-
fection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume
was not considered to be increased in value by the frontis-
piece. Without, however, venturing to doubt the entire
sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in Claude, let us
consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to
originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it
in its details. Claude has permitted us to see every battle-
ment, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the
picture is to count how many there are. Nature would
have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper
lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we
should have known from experience was indicative of
350
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
battlements, but which we might as well have thought of
creating as of counting. Claude has given you the walls
below in one dead void of uniform grey. There is nothing
to be seen, nor felt, nor guessed at in it ; it is grey paint
or grey shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it
is nothing more. Kature would have let you see, nay,
would have compelled you to see, thousands of spots and
lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted for,
but yet all characteristic and different from each other;
breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from
waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather,
mouldering hollows, sparkling casements — all would have
been there — none, indeed, seen as such, none comprehen-
sible or like themselves, but all visible ; little shadows, and
sparkles, and scratches, making that whole sjjace of colour
a transparent, palpitating, various infinity.
8. Or take one of Poussin's extreme distances, such as
that in the Sacrifice of Isaac. It is luminous, retiring, deli-
cate and perfect in tone, and is quite complete enough to
deceive and delight the careless eye to which all distances
are alike ; nay, it is perfect and masterly, and absolutely
right if we consider it as a sketch, — as a first plan of a
distance, afterwards to be carried out in detail. But we
must remember that all these alternate spaces of grey and
gold are not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it —
not its substance, but its light and shade. They are just
what nature would cast over it, and write upon it with
every cloud, but which she would cast in play, and without
carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible import-
ance. All her work and her attention would be given to
bring out from underneath this, and through this, the
forms and the material character which this can only be
valuable to illustrate, not to conceal. Every one of those
broad spaces she would linger over in protracted delight,
teaching you fresh lessons in every hairsbreadth of it, and
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
351
pouring her fulness of invention into it, until the mind
lost itself in following her, — now fringing the dark edge
of the shadow with a tufted line of level forest — now losing
it for an instant in a breath of mist — then breaking it with
the white gleaming angle of a narrow brook — then dwelling
upon it again in a gentle, mounded, melting undulation,
over the other side of which she would carry you down
into a dusty space of soft, crowded light, with the hedges,
and the paths, and the sprinkled cottages and scattered
trees mixed up and mingled together in one beautiful,
delicate, impenetrable mystery — sparkling and melting,
and passing away into the sky, without one line of distinct-
ness, or one instant of vacancy.
9. Xow it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow
all this — he cannot come up to the same degree and order
of infinity — but he can give us a lesser kind of infinity.
He has not one-thousandth part of the space to occupy
which nature has ; but he can, at least, leave no part of
that space vacant and unprofitable. If nature carries out
her minutiae over miles, he has no excuse for generalizing
in inches. And if he will only give us all he can, if he
will give us a fulness as complete and as mysterious as
nature's, we will pardon him for its being the fulness of
a cup instead of an ocean. But we will not pardon him,
if, because he has not the mile to occupy, he will not
occupy the inch, and because he has fewer means at his
command, will leave half of those in his power un ex-
erted. Still less will we pardon him for mistaking the
sport of nature for her labour, and for following her
only in her hour of rest, without observing how she has
worked for it. After spending centuries in raising the
forest, and guiding the river, and modelling the moun-
tain, she exults over her work in buoyancy of spirit, with
playful sunbeam and flying cloud ; but the painter must
go through the same labour, or he must not have the
352
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
same recreation. Let him chisel his rock faithfully, and
tuft his forest delicately, and then Ave will allow him his
freaks of light and shade, and thank him for them ; but
we will not be put off with the play before the lesson —
with the adjunct instead of the essence — with the illus-
tration instead of the fact.
10. I am somewhat anticipating my subject here, be-
cause I can scarcely help answering the objections which
I know must arise in the minds of most readers, espe-
cially of those who are partially artistical, respecting
" generalization," " breadth," " effect," etc. It were to
be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so
frequently on the necessity of breadth, without explain-
ing what it means ; and that we had more constant
reference made to the principle which I can only re-mem-
ber having seen once clearly explained and insisted on,
that breadth is not vacancy. Generalization is unity,
not destruction of parts / and composition is not anni-
hilation, hut arrangement of materials. The bkeadtu
which unites the truths of nature with her harmonies
is meritorious and beautiful • but the breadth which
annihilates those truths by the million is not painting
nature, but painting over her. AnxL so the masses which
result from right concords and relations of details are
sublime and impressive ; but the masses which result
from the eclipse of details are contemptible and pain-
full And Ave shall sIioav, in folloAving parts of the
work, that distances like those of Poussin are mere mean-
ingless tricks of clever execution, which, Avhen once dis-
covered, the artist may repeat over and over again, Avith
* Of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. An artist
may generalize the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of bark,
and do us a kindness ; but he must not generalize the details of a
champaign, in which there is a history of creation. The full discussion
of the subject belongs to a future part of our investigation.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
353
mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, both to
himself and to his superficial admirers, with no more
exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling than any
tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental pattern
of furniture. Be this as it may, however (for we cannot
enter upon the discussion of the question here), the fal-
sity and imperfection of such distances admit of no
dispute. Beautiful and ideal they may be ; true they
are not : and in the same way we might go through every
part and portion of the works of the old masters, showing
throughout, either that you have every leaf and blade of
grass staring defiance to the mystery of nature, or that
you have dead spaces of absolute vacuity, equally deter-
mined in their denial of her fulness. And even if we
ever find (as here and there, in their better pictures, we
do) changeful passages of agreeable playing colour, or
mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious atmos-
phere, even here the touches, though satisfactory to the
eye, are suggestive of nothing, — they are characterless, —
they have none of the peculiar expressiveness and mean-
ing by which nature maintains the variety and interest
even of what she most conceals. She always tells a story,
however hintedly and vaguely ; each of her touches is
different from all the others ; and we feel with every
one, that though we cannot tell what it is, it cannot be
anything y while even the most dexterous distances of the
old masters pretend to secresy without having anything
to conceal, and are ambiguous, not from the concentration
of meaning, but from the want of it.
11. And now, take up one of Turner's distances, it mat-
ters not which, or of what kind, — drawing or painting, small
or great, done thirty years ago, or for last year's Acad-
emy, as you like ; say that of the Mercury and Argus,
and look if every fact which I have just been pointing
out in nature be not carried out in it. Abundant, beyond
354
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
the power of the eye to embrace or follow, vast and
various, beyond the power of the mind to comprehend,
there is yet not one atom in its whole extent and mass
which does not suggest more than it represents ; nor does
it suggest vaguely, but in such a manner as to prove that
the conception of each individual inch of that distance
is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind, a
separate picture fully worked out : but yet, clearly and
fully as the idea is formed, just so much of it is given,
and no more, as nature would have allowed us to feel or
see ; just so much as would enable a spectator of expe-
rience and knowledge to understand almost every minute
fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the unprac-
tised and careless eye, just what a distance of nature's
own would appear, an unintelligible mass. Isot one line
out of the millions there is without meaning, yet there is
not one which is not effected and disguised by the dazzle
and indecision of distance. Ivo form is made out, and
yet no form is unknown.
12. Perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better
to be understood by observing the distant character of
rich architecture than of any other object. Go to the
top of Highgate Hill on a clear summer morniug at five
o'clock, and look at Westminster Abbey. You will re-
ceive an impression of a building enriched with multi-
tudinous vertical lines. Try to distinguish one of those
lines all the way down from the one next to it : You can-
not. Try to count them : You cannot. Try to make out
the beginning or end of any one of them : You cannot.
Look at it generally, and it is all symmetry and arrange-
ment. Look at it in its parts, and it is all inextricable
confusion. Am not I, at this moment, describing a piece
of Turner's drawing, with the same words by which I
describe nature ? And what would one of the old masters
have done with such a building as this in his distance ?
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
355
Either lie would only have given the shadows of the but-
tresses, and the light and dark sides of the two towers,
and two dots for the windows ; or if more ignorant and
more ambitious, he had attempted to render some of the
detail, it would have been done by distinct lines, — would
have been broad caricature of the delicate building, felt
at once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. His most
successful effort would only have given us, through
his carefully toned atmosphere, the effect of a colossal
parish church, without one line of carving on its eco-
nomic sides. Turner, and Turner only, would follow and
render on the canvas that mystery of decided line, — that
distinct, sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable
richness, which, examined part by part, is to the eye
nothing but confusion and defeat, which, taken as a
whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.*
13. Xor is this mode of representation true only with
respect to distances. Every object, however near the eye,
has something about it wdiich you cannot see, and which
brings the mystery of distance even into every part and
portion of wmat we suppose ourselves to see most dis-
tinctly. Stand in the Piazza di St. Marco, at Yenice, as
close to the church as you can, without losing sight of the
top of it. Look at the capitals of the columns on the
second story. You see that they are exquisitely rich,
carved all over. Tell me their patterns : You cannot.
Tell me the direction of a single line in them : You can-
not. Yet you see a multitude of lines, and you have so
much feeling of a certain tendency and arrangement in
those lines, that you are quite sure the capitals are beauti-
* Vide, for illustration, Fontainebleau, in the Illustrations to Scott ;
Vignette at opening of Human Life, in Rogers's Poems ; Venice, in the
Italy ; Chateau de Bloia ; the Rouen, and Pont Neuf, Paris, in the
Rivers of France. The distances of all the Academy pictures of Ven-
ice, especially the Shylock, are most instructive.
356
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
fill, and that they are all different from each other. But
I defy you to make out one single line in any one of
them.
14. JSTow go to Canaietto's painting of this church, in
the Palazzo Manfrini, taken from the very spot on which
you stood. How much has he represented of all this ?
A black dot under each capital for the shadow, and a
yellow one above it for the light. There is not a vestige
nor indication of carving or decoration of any sort or kind.
Very different from this, but erring on the other side,
is the ordinary drawing of the architect, who gives the
principal lines of the design with delicate clearness and
precision, but with no uncertainty or mystery about them ;
which mystery being removed, all space and size are de-
stroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, not
of a building. But in the capital lying on the foreground
in Turner's Daphne hunting with Leucippus, we have the
perfect truth. ~Not one jag of the acanthus leaves is ab-
solutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel in
an instant that all are there. And so it will invariably be
found through every portion of detail in his late and
most perfect works.
15. But if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish
merely in the more delicate instances of architectural
decoration, how much more in the ceaseless and incom-
parable decoration of nature? The detail of a single
weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn. Every
leaf and stalk has a design and tracery upon it, — every
knot of grass an intricacy of shade which the labour of
years could never imitate, and which, if such labour could
follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would
yet be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases
brought forward, it is not clearly seen, but confusedly
and mysteriously. That which is nearness for the bank
is distance for its details ; and however near it may \>%
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
357
the greater part of those details are still a beautiful in-
comprehensibility.*
16. Hence, throughout the picture, the expression of
space and size is dependent upon obscurity, united with,
or rather resultant from, exceeding fulness. We destroy
both space and size, either by the vacancy, which affords
us no measure of space, or by the distinctness, which
gives us a false one. The distance of Poussin, having no
indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of
any kind, may be fifty miles off, or may be five ; we can-
not tell — we have no measure, and in consequence, no
vivid impression. But a middle distance of Iiobbima's
involves a contradiction in terms ; it states a distance by
perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail.
* It is to be remembered, however, that these truths present them-
selves in all probability under very different phases to individuals of
different powers of vision. Many artists who appear to generalize
rudely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavouring to render the ap-
pearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. Others may
be led by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail.
Works which are painted for effect at a certain distance must be always
seen at disadvantage by those whose sight is of different range from
the painter's. Another circumstance to which I ought above to have
alluded is the scale of the picture ; for there are different degrees of
generalization, and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to
every scale : the stipple of the miniature painter would be offensive on
features of the life size, and the leaves which Tintoret may articulate
on a canvas of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized by Turner
on one of four by three. Another circumstance of some importance is
the assumed distance of the foreground ; many landscape painters seem
to think their nearest foreground is always equally near, whereas its
distance from the spectator varies not a little, being always at least its
own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated by figures or any
other object of known size at the nearest part of it. With Claude al-
most always ; with Turner often, as in the Daphne and Leucippus, this
breadth is forty or fifty yards ; and as the nearest foreground object
must then be at least that distance removed, and may be much more,
it is evident that no completion of close detail is in such cases allow-
able (see here another proof of Claude's erroneous practice) ; with
358
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
17. A single dusty roll of Turner's bruskis more truly
expressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of
Hobbima could have rendered his canvas, if he had
worked on it till doomsday. What Sir J. Eeynolds
says of the misplaced labour of his Roman acquaintance
on separate leaves of foliage, and the certainty he ex-
presses that a man who attended to general character
would in five minutes produce a more faithful representa-
tion of a tree than the unfortunate mechanist in as many
years, is thus perfectly true and well founded; but this is
not because details are undesirable, but because they are
best given by swift execution, and because, individually,
they cannot be given at all.
18. But it should be observed (though we shall be better
Titian and Tintoret, on the contrary, the foreground is rarely more
than five or six yards broad, and its objects therefore being only five
or six yards distant are entirely detailed.
None of these circumstances, however, in any wise affect the great
principle, the confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all
cases. I ought to have noted, however, that many of the pictures of
. Turner in which the confused drawing has been least understood, have
been luminous twilights; and that the uncertainty of twilight is there-
fore added to that of general distance. In the evenings of the south
it not unfrequently happens that objects touched with the reflected
light of the western sky continue, even for the space of half an hour
after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in colour, and almost as bright
as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the moon begins
to cast a shadow : but in spite of this brilliancy of colour all the de-
tails become ghostly and ill-defined. This is a favourite moment of
Turner's, and he invariably characterizes it, not by gloom, but by un-
certainty of detail. I have never seen the effect of clear twilight
thoroughly rendered by art ; that effect in which all details are lost,
while intense clearness and light are still felt in the atmosphere, in
which nothing is distinctly seen, and yet it is not darkness, far less
mist, that is the cause of concealment. Turner's efforts at rendering
this effect (as the Wilderness of Engedi, Assos, Chateau de Blois, Caer-
laverock, and others innumerable), have always some slight appearance
of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of details ; but it remains to
be shown that any closer approximation to the effect is possible.
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
359
able to insist upon this point in futufe) that much of
harm and error has arisen from the supposition and as-
sertions of swift and brilliant historical painters, that the
same principles of execution are entirely applicable to
landscape, which are right for the figure. The artist
who falls into extreme detail in drawing the human form
is apt to become disgusting rather than pleasing. It is
more agreeable that the general outline and soft hues of
flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and
lines of intersection. And even the most rapid and gen-
eralizing expression of the human body, if directed by
perfect knowledge, and rigidly faithful in drawing, will
commonly omit very little of what is agreeable or impres-
sive. But the exclusively generalizing landscape painter
omits the whole of what is valuable in his subject, — omits
thoughts, designs, and beauties by the million, everything,
indeed, which can furnish him with variety or expression.
A distance in Lincolnshire, or in Lombardy, might both
be generalized into such blue and yellow stripes as we see
in Poussin ; but whatever there is of beauty or character
in either depends altogether on our understanding the
details, and feeling the difference between the morasses
and ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry
trees of the other. And so in every part of the subject.
I have no hesitation in asserting that it is impossible to
go too fine, or think too much about details in landscape,
so that they be rightly arranged and rightly massed ; but
that it is equally impossible to render anything like the
fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery and
obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and in
which Turner only has followed her.
19. We have now rapidly glanced at such general truths
of nature as can be investigated without much knowledge
of what is beautiful. Questions of arrangement, massing,
and generalization, I prefer leaving untouched, until we
360
DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS.
know something about details, and something about what
is beautiful. All that is desirable, even in these mere
' technical and artificial points, is based upon truths and
habits of nature ; but we cannot understand those truths
until we are acquainted with the specific forms and minor
details which they affect, or out of which they arise.
CHAPTEE XL
DISTANCE AND THE COLOUR OF A PAINTING.
Incidentally to this question of the effect of distance
upon outline and distinction of objects, we may here
notice the effect of distance upon the colouring of a pic-
ture as referred to the position of the observer.
1. Yery curious effects are produced upon cdl paint-
ings by the distance of the eye from them. One of these
is the giving a certain softness to all colours, so that hues
which would look coarse or bald, if seen near, may some-
times safely be left, and are left, by the great workmen in
their large works, to be corrected by the kind of bloom
which the distance of thirty or forty feet sheds over them.
I say, " sometimes," because this optical effect is a very
subtle one, and seems to take place chiefly on certain
colours, dead fresco colours especially ; also the practice
of the great workmen is very different, and seems much to
be regulated by the time at their disposal. Tintoret's pic-
ture of Paradise, with 500 figures in it, adapted to a sup-
posed distance of from fifty to a hundred feet, is yet colour-
ed so tenderly that the nearer it is approached the better it
looks ; nor is it at all certain that the colour which is
wrong near, will look right a little way off, or even a
great way off ; I have never seen any of our Academy
portraits made to look like Titians by being hung above
the line ; still, distance does produce a definite effect on
pictorial colour, and in general an improving one. It
also deepens the relative power of all strokes and sha-
dows. A touch of shade which, seen near, is all but invisi-
ble, and, as far as effect on the picture is concerned, cpiite
10
362
DISTANCE AND COLOUR.
powerless, will be found, a little way off, to tell as a
definite shadow, and to have a notable result on all that is
near it ; and so markedly is this the case, that in all fine
and first-rate drawing there are many passages in which
if we see the touches we are putting on, we are doing too
much ; they must be put on by the feeling of the hand
only, and have their effect on the eye when seen in uni-
son, a little way off. This seems strange ; but I believe
the reason of it is, that, seen at some distance, the parts of
the touch oi" touches are gathered together, and their rela-
te o '
tions truly shown ; while seen near they are scattered
and confused. On a large scale, and in common things,
the phenomenon is of constant occurrence ; the " dirt
bands" on a glacier, for instance, are not to be counted
on the glacier itself, and yet their appearance is truly
stated by Professor Forbes to be u one of great import-
ance, though from the two circumstances of being best
seen at a distance, or considerable height, and in a feeble
or slanting light, it had very naturally been overlooked
both by myself and others, like what are called blind paths
over moors, visible at a distance, but lost when we stand
upon them." *
2. Not only, however, does this take place in a picture
very notably, so that a group of touches will tell as a
compact and intelligible mass, a little way off, though
confused when seen near ; but also a dark touch gains at
a little distance in apparent darkness, a light touch in
apparent light, and a coloured touch in apparent colour, to
a degree inconceivable by an unpractised person ; so that
literally, a good painter is obliged, working near his
picture, to do in everything only about half of what he
wants, the rest being done by the distance. And if the
effect, at such distance, is to be of confusion, then sorae-
* Travels through the Alps, chap. viii.
DISTANCE AND COLOUR.
363
times, seen near, the work mast be a confusion worse con-
founded, almost utterly unintelligible ; hence the amaze-
ment and blank wonder of the public at some of the
finest passages of Turner, which look like a mere mean-
ingless and disorderly work of chance, but, rightly under-
stood, are preparations for a given result, like the most
subtle moves of a game of chess, of which no bystander
can for a long time see the intention, but which are, in
dim, underhand, wonderful way, bringing out their fore-
seen and inevitable result.
3. And, be it observed, no other means would have
brought out that result. Every distance and size of
"picture has its own proper method of work '• the artist
will necessarily vary that method somewhat according to
circumstances and expectations : he may sometimes finish
in a way fitted for close observation, to please his patron,
or catch the public eye ; and sometimes be tempted into
such finish by his zeal, or betrayed into it by forgetful-
ness, as I think Tintoret has been, slightly, in his Para-
dise, above mentioned. But there never yet was a
picture thoroughly effective at ct distance, which did not
look more or less unintelligible near. Things which in
distant effect are folds of dress, seen near are only two
or three grains of golden colour set there apparently by
chance ; what far off is a solid limb, near is a grey shade
with a misty outline, so broken that it is not easy to find
its boundary ; and what far off may perhaps be a man's
face, near, is only a piece of thin brown colour, enclosed
by a single flowing wave of a brush loaded with white,
while three brown touches across one edge of it, ten feet
away, become a mouth and eyes. The more subtle the
power of the artist, the more curious the difference will
be between the apparent means and the effect produced ;
and one of the most sublime feelings connected with art
consists in the perception of this very strangeness, and in
364
DISTANCE AND COLOUR.
a sympathy with, the foreseeing and foreordaining power
jof the artist. In Turner, Tintoret, and Paul Yeronese,
the intenseness of perception, first, as to what is to be
done, and then, of the means of doing it, is so colossal
that I always feel in the presence of their pictures just as
other people would in that of a supernatural being.
Common talkers use the word " magic " of a great paint-
er's power without knowing what they mean by it.
They mean a great truth. That power is magical ; so
magical, that, well understood, no enchanter's work could
be more miraculous or more appalling • and though I
am not often kept from saying things by timidity, I
should be afraid of offending the reader, if I were to
define to him accurately the kind and the degree of awe
with which I have stood before Tintoret's Adoration of
the Magi, at Yenice, and Yeronese's Marriage in Cana, in
the Louvre. 41. P. , 61.
PART II.
SCULPTURE.
SCULPTURE.
COMPILED CHIEFLY FROM RUSKIN's ARATRA PENTELICI.
1 . — DEFLATION.
The word " sculpture," though in ultimate accuracy it
is to be limited to the development of form in hard sub-
stances by cutting away portions of the mass, in broad
definition must be held to signify the reduction of any
shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended shape ,
whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of
the instrument employed ; whether we carve a granite
mountain or a piece of boxwood, and whether we use, for
our forming instrument, axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our
own hands, or water to soften, or fire to fuse ; — whenever
and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do
so under the laws of the one great Art of Sculpture.
2. SCULPTURE AND NATIONAL LIFE.
Hitherto the energy of growth in any people may be
almost directly measured by their passion for imitative
art, namely, for sculpture or for the drama, which is
living or speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both. Of
the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more passionate,
and involving conditions of greater excitement and luxury,
is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength
in the people ; while fine sculpture, requiring always sub-
mission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being
368
SCULPTURE.
in early and active progress. There is no instance of fine
sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid, weak,
or in decadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit ;
but their sculpture, in days of decline, is always base.
Aratra Pentelici, 29.
3. — ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OE SCULPTURE.
a. Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant
bossiness or roundness of surface. Whatever the modu-
lated masses may represent, the primary condition is that
they shall be beautifully rounded, and disposed with due
discretion and order.
b. It is difficult at first to feel this order and beauty of
surface apart from imitation. It is the essential business
of the sculptor to obtain abstract beauty of surface,
rendered definite by increase and decline of light, whether
he imitates anything or not.
The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoy-
ment of such a. piece of art entirely depends, is one of the
aesthetic faculties which nothing can develop but time
and education. It belongs only to the highly-trained na-
tions ; and, among them, to their most strictly and refined
classes, though the germs of it are found, as part of their
innate power, in every people capable of art. It has for
the most part vanished at present from the English mind,
in consequence of an eager desire for excitement, and for
the kind of splendour that exhibits wealth careless of
dignity. The order and harmony which, in his enthusias-
tic account of the Theatre of Epidaurus, Pausanias in-
sists on before beauty, can only be recognized by stern
order and harmony in our daily lives ; and the perception
of them is as little to be compelled, or taught suddenly,
as the laws of still finer choice in the conception of dra-
matic incident which regulate poetic sculpture.
SCULPTURE.
3C9
4. THE INSTINCTS OF SCULPTURE.
Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as
the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider
the passions or instincts of its subjects.
a. The Instinct of Mimicry. The graphic arts begin
in merely mimetic efforts or the making of toys. They
proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization, to act
under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct.
b. The Instinct of Idolatry. The second great condition
for the advance of the art of sculpture is that the race
should possess., in addition to the mimetic instinct, the
realistic or idolizing instinct ; the desire to see as sub-
stantial the powers that are unseen, and bring those near
that are afar off, and to possess and cherish those that are
strange. To make, in some way, tangible and visible the
nature of the gods — to illustrate and explain it by sym-
bols ; to bring the immortals out of the recesses of the
clouds, and make them Penates ; to bring back the dead
from darkness and make them Lares. Our conception of
this tremendous and universal human passion has been
altogether narrowed by the current idea that Pagan re-
ligions art consisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality
to the gods. The personality was never doubted ; it was
visibility, interpretation, and possession that the hearts of
men sought, instead of an abstract idea.
As no nation ever attained real greatness during periods
in which it was subject to any condition of idolatry, so no
nation has ever attained or persevered in greatness, except
in reaching and maintaining a passionate imagination of a
spiritual state higher than that of men; and of spiritual
creatures nobler than men, having a quite real and per-
sonal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us.
370
SCULPTURE.
But I must now beg your close attention, because I have
to point out distinctions in modes of conception which will
appear trivial to you unless accurately understood; but
of an importance in the history of art which cannot be
overrated.
When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Stras-
bourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious
decorators, would suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself,
or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sit-
ting in the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delight-
ful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts
about Strasbourg, but never for a moment supposed to
he Strasbourg.
Similarly, they might have taken pleasure in a statue
representing a river instead of a city — the Phine or the
Garonne, suppose — and have been touched with strong emo-
tion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, and
yet never think for an instant that the statue was the river.
Put if you get nothing more in the depth of the na-
tional mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and
idolizing instincts, there may be still no progress pos-
sible for the arts except in delicacy of manipulation
and accumulative caprice of design. You must have not
only the idolizing instinct, but an r)6os which chooses the
right thing to idolize. Else you will get states of art like
those in China or India, non-progressive, and in great part
diseased and frightful, being wrought under the influence
of foolish terror or foolish admiration. So that a third
condition, completing and confirming both the others, must
exist in order to the development of the creative power.
c. The Instinct of Discipline. This third condition is
that the heart of the nation shall he set on the discovery of
just and equal law, and shall he from day to day devel-
oping that law more perfectly.
SCULPTURE.
371
The Greek school of sculpture was formed during and
in consequence of the national effort to discover the nature
of justice; the Tuscan, during and in consequence of the
national effort to discover the nature of justification.
Now, when a nation with mimetic instinct and imagina-
tive longing is also thus occupied earnestly in the dis-
covery of Ethic law, that effort gradually brings precision
and truth into all its manual acts ; and the physical prog-
ress of sculpture, as in the Greek so in the Tuscan school,
consists in gradually limiting what was before indefinite,
in verifying what was inaccurate, and in humanizing
what was monstrous. I might perhaps content you by
showing these external phenomena, and by dwelling simply
on the increasing desire of naturalness, which compels, in
every successive decade of years, literally, in the sculp-
tured images, the mimicked bones to come together, bone
to his bone ; and the flesh to come upon them, until from
a flattened and pinched handful of clay, respecting which
you may gravely question whether it was intended for a
human form at all ; — by slow degrees, and added touch to
touch, in increasing consciousness of the bodily truth, —
at last the Aphrodite of Melos stands before you a perfect
woman. But all that search for physical accuracy is
merely the external operation, in the arts, of the seeking
for truth in the inner soul.
Observe farther : the increasing truth in representation
is co-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be rep-
resented. The pursuit of justice, which regulates the
imitative effort, regulates also the development of the race
into dignity of person, as of mind ; and their culminating
art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at the moment
when truth becomes the most lovely. And then ideal
sculpture may safely go into portraiture.
These, then, are the three great passions which are con-
cerned in true sculpture. I cannot find better, or at least
372
SCULPTURE.
more easily remembered, names for them than u the In-
stincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, and Discipline," meaning, by
the last, the desire of equity and wholesome restraint in
all acts and works of life. Now, of these there is no ques-
tion but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and
the love of Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a
grave question whether the yearning for Idolatry (the
desire of companionship with images) is right.
5. — COMPOSITION OF GREEK SCULPTURE.
a. Likeness. All second-rate artists will tell you that
the object of fine art is not resemblance, but some kind of
abstraction more refined than reality. But the object of
the great Eesemblant Arts is, and always has been, to
resemble, and to resemble as closely as possible. It is the
function of a good portrait to set the man before you in
habit as he lived. It is the function of good landscape to
set the scene before you in its reality, to make you, if it
may be, think the clouds are flying and the streams foam-
ing. It is the function of the best sculptor — the true
Daedalus — to make stillness look like breathing, and
marble look like flesh. A. P., 103.
Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes a man's
face as like a man's face as it can. The greatest masters
of all greatest schools — Phidias, Donatello, Velasquez, or
Sir J. Reynolds — all tried to make human creatures as like
human creatures as they could. Look at the foot of Cor-
reggio's Venus in the Xational Gallery. He made the foot
as like a foot as he could. In Turner's drawing of " Ivy
Bridge " you will find the water in it like real water, and
the ducks like real ducks. Queen of the Air, 166.
h. RigJttness. What are the merits of this Greek art
which make it so exemplary ? Not that it is beautiful, but
SCULPTURE.
373
that it is Right. All that it desires to do it does, and all
that it does it does well. Its laws of self-restraint are
marvellous. It is contented to do a simple thing-, with
only one or two qualities, restrictedly desired, and suf-
ficiently attained. There is entire masterhood of its busi-
ness up to the required point. A Greek does not reach
after other people's strength, nor outreach his own. He
never tries to paint before he can draw ; he never tries to
lay on flesh where there are no bones. Those are his first
merits — sincere and innocent purpose, strong common
sense and principle, and all the strength that comes of
these, and all the grace that follows on that strength.
c. Masses. Greek art is always exemplary in disposi-
tion of masses, which is a thing that in modern days
students rarely look for, artists not enough, and the public
never. But whatever else Greek work may fail of, you
may be always sure its masses are well placed, and their
placing has been the object of most subtle care.
For example: among Greek coins yet preserved is one
of the town Camarina, inscribed with the name of the
town, and the figure of Hercules, having the face of a
man and the skin of the lion's head. You can't read the
name, though you know Greek, without pains — the coin
could tell its own story — but what did above all things
matter was that no letter of the word should curve in a
wrong place with respect to the outline of the head, and
divert the eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the
whole inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of
gradually diminishing size, continuing from the lion's
paw, round the neck, up to the forehead, and answering a
decorative purpose as completely as the curls of the mane
opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or displace
one without mischief; they are almost as even in reticula-
tion as a piece of basket work, but each has a different
SCULPTURE.
form and due relation to the rest, and if you set to work
to draw that mane rightly, you will find that, whatever
time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite into
their places, and that every tress out of its place does an
injury.
But another question here arises. Granted that these
tresses may be finely placed, still they are not like a lion's
mane. If the face is to be like the face of man, why is
not the lion's mane to be like a lion's mane % Simply be-
cause fringes and jags would spoil the surface of the coin,
and though they might be cut they could not be stamped
by a die. So the Greek uses his common sense, wastes no
time, loses no skill, and says to you, "Here are beautifully
set tresses, which I have carefully designed, and easily
stamped. Enjoy them; if you cannot understand that
they mean a lion's mane, heaven mend your wits."
The sum, then, of Greek art work is well-founded know-
ledge, simple and right aims, thorough mastery of handi-
craft, splendid invention of arrangement, and unerring
common sense in treatment. The reason that Greek art
so often disappoints people is that indiscriminate and un-
informed laudation leads them to look in it for something
that is not there, such as the Greek ideal of beauty ;
whereas the Greek race was not at all one of exalted
beauty, hut only of general and healthy completeness of
form. There is not a single instance of a very beautiful
head left by the highest school of Greek art. You may
take the Venus of Melos as a standard of beauty of the
central Greek type. She has tranquil, regular, and lofty
features ; but could not hold her own for a moment
against the beauty of a simple English girl of pure race
and kind heart. Queen of the Air, 169.
This is more extensively considered in the chapter on
" Schools of Sculpture."
SCULPTURE.
375
d. Drapery. It is a rule that nothing must be repre-
sented by sculpture, external to any living form, which
does not help to enforce or illustrate the conception of life.
Both dress and armour may be made to do this by great
sculptors, and are continually so used by the greatest.
One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian and
Florentine schools is dependent on their treatment of dra-
pery in this respect : an Athenian always sets it to exhibit
the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, or
from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture ; a
Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to
conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit
mental emotion / but both use it to enhance the life,
either of the body or soul. Donatello and Michael An-
gelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble
armour in- the same way ; but base sculptors carve drapery
and armour for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness
only, and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern
that all delight in mere incidental beauty, which painting
often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden to sculpture ; — for
instance, in painting the branch of a tree you may rightly
represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it, but a
sculptor must not touch one of them ; they are unessential
to the tree's life — he must give the flow and bending of
the branch only. A. P., 94.
In " The Seven Lamps of Architecture," ch. iv., § xi.,
E-uskin says : Drapery, as such, is always ignoble ; it be-
comes a subject of interest only by the colour it bears, and
the impression it receives from some foreign form or force.
All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture, have,
so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of
two great functions ; they are the exponents of motion and
of gravitation. They are the most valuable means of ex-
pressing past as well as present motion in the figure, and
376
SCULPTURE.
they are almost the only means of indicating to the eye
the force of gravity which resists such motion. The Greeks
used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly ne-
cessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in all represen-
tation of action, exaggerating the arrangements of it which
express lightness in the material, and follow gesture in
the person. The Christian sculptors, caring little for the
body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on the coun-
tenance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but
soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which the
Greek had not seen, or had despised. The principal ele-
ment of this expression was the entire removal of agitation
from what was so pre-eminently capable of being agitated.
It fell from their human forms plumb down, sweeping the
ground heavily, and concealing the feet ; while the Greek
drapery was blown away from the thigh. The thick and
coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed
to the thin and gauzy web of antique material, suggested
simplicity of division as well as weight of fall. There
was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus the dra-
pery began to represent the spirit of repose, as it before
had of motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had
no power upon the garment, as the passion none upon the
soul ; and the motion of the figure only bent into a softer >
line the stillness of the falling veil, followed by it, like a
slow cloud, by dropping rain ; only in links of lighter un-
dulation it followed the dances of the angels.
Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble ; but it is as an ex-
ponent of other and higher things. As that of gravitation
it has especial majesty, being literally the only means we
have of fully representing this mysterious natural force of
the earth (for falling water is less passive and less defined
in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because it
receives the forms of solid curved surface, and expresses
the force of another invisible element. But drapery trust-
SCULPTURE.
377
ed to its own merits, and given for its own sake — drapery
like that of Carlo Dolce and the Carraccio — is always base.
e. Accessories inadmissible. Every accessory in paint-
ing is valuable, but not one can be admitted in sculpture.
You must carve nothing but what has life. It is the
Greeks who say it, but whatever they say of sculpture
be assured is right. For instance, here is an exquisite
little painted poem by Edward Frere, a cottage interior.
Every accessory in the painting is of value — the fireside,
the tiled floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket
hanging from the roof. The poor little girl was more in-
teresting to Edward Frere, he being a painter, because she
was poorly dressed, and wore those clumsy shoes and old
red cap and patched gown. May we sculpture her so ? ~No.
We may sculpture her naked if we like, but not in rags.
But if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we
give her a pretty frock with ribands and flounces to it, and
put her in marble in that ? No. We may put her simplest
peasant dress, so it be perfect and orderly, into marble ;
anything finer than that would be more dishonourable in
the eyes of the Athenians than rags. If she were a French
princess you might carve her embroidered robe and dia-
dem ; if she were Joan of Arc you might carve her ar-
mour, if she has it on. It is not the honourableness or
beauty of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it
by her body. A. P., 96.
f. Grouping* Much fine formative arrangement de-
pends on a more or less elliptical or pear-shaped balance of
the group, obtained by arranging the principal members of
it on two opposite curves, and either centralizing it by some
powerful feature at the base, centre, or summit, or else clasp-
ing it together by some conspicuous point or knot. A very
smajl object will often do this satisfactorily. 5 m. P. 181.
* See Laws of Grouping, page 99.
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SCULPTURE,
g. Lines. — 1. Lines of Motive. We must remember that
a great composition always has a leading emotional purpose,
technically called its motive, to which all its lines and
forms have some relation. Undulating, and a majority of
angular lines, for instance, are expressive of action, and
would be false in effect if the motive of the composition
was one of repose. Horizontal and some angular lines
are expressive of rest and strength ; and would destroy
a design whose purpose was to express disquiet and fee-
bleness. It is therefore necessary to ascertain the motive
before descending to detail. 5 M. P., 175.
2. Truth of Lines. The difference in the accuracy of
the lines of the Torso of the Vatican (the Maestro of M.
Angelo) from those in one of M. Angelo's finest works,
could, perhaps, scarcely be appreciated by any eye or feel-
ing undisciplined by the most perfect and practical ana-
tomical knowledge. It rests on points of such traceless and
refined delicacy, that though we feel them in the result,
we cannot follow them in the details, yet they are such
and so great as to place the Torso alone in art solitary and
supreme ; while the finest of M. Angelo's works, considered
with respect to truth alone, are said to be on a level with
antiques of the second class, under the Apollo and the
Venus, that is, two classes or grades below the Torso. But
suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing the most
entire appreciation of the excellence, were to sit down, pen
in hand, to try to tell us wherein the peculiar truth of
each line consisted. Could any words that he could use
make us feel the hairbreadth of depth and distance on
which all depends ? or end in anything more than the bare
assertion of the inferiority of this line to that, which, if
we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanations could
ever illustrate to us? He might as well endeavour to ex-
plain to us by words some taste or other subject of sense
SCULPTURE.
379
of which we had no experience. And so it is with all
truths of the highest order; they are separated from those
of average precision by points of extreme delicacy, which
none but a cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to ex-
press which, all words are absolutely meaningless and
useless. Two lines are laid on canvas or cut on stone ;
one is right and another wrong. There is no difference
between them appreciable by the compasses — none appre-
ciable by the ordinary eye — none which can be pointed out
if it is not seen. One person feels it, another does not ;
but the feeling or sight of the one can by no words be
communicated to the other. That feeling and that sight
have been the reward of years of labour. l M. p., 404.
3. Lines of Beauty and Grace. That all forms of
acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves
will, I believe, be at once allowed ; but that which there
will be more need especially to prove is the subtilty and
constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever.
I believe that except in crystals, in certain mountain forms,
admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrasts (as in the
slope of debris), in rays of light, in the levels of calm
water and alluvial land, and in some few organic develop-
ments, there are no lines or surfaces of nature without
curvature. Right lines are often suggested which are not
actual. For the most part the eye is fed on natural forms
with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument
can follow. 2 M. P., 45.
All curves, however, are not equally beautiful, and their
differences of beauty depend on the different proportions
borne to each other by those infinitely small right lines of
which they may be conceived as composed. When these
lines are equal and contain equal angles, there can be
no unity of sequence in them. The resulting curve,
380
SCULPTURE.
the circle, is therefore the least beautiful of all curves.
The simplest of the beautiful curves are the conic
and the various spirals; but it is as rash as it is diffi-
cult to endeavour to trace any ground of superiority or
inferiority among the infinite number of the higher
curves. 2 M. P., 59.
4. Lines of Repose. Hence I think that there is no
desire more intense or more exalted than that which exists
in all rightly disciplined minds for the evidences of repose
in external signs, and what I cautiously said respecting in-
finity, I say fearlessly respecting repose, that no work of
art can be great without it, and that all art is great in pro-
portion to the appearance of it. It is the most unfailing
test of beauty, whether of matter or of motion, nothing can
be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not,
and in strict proportion to its appearance in the work is the
majesty of mind to be inferred in the artificer. Without
regard to other qualities, we may look to this for our evi-
dence, and by the search for this alone we may be led to the
rejection of all that is base, and the accepting of all that is
good and great, for the paths of wisdom are all peace. We
shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side
by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the
whole world horizon, Phidias, Michael AngelOj and Dante ;
and then, separated from their great religious thrones only
by less fulness and earnestness of Faith, Homer, and
Shakspeare ; and from these we may go down step by step
among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly
observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of
restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspira-
tion vanishes in the tottering affectations or the tortured
insanities of modern times. There is no art, no pursuit,
whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test
alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away
SCULPTURE.
3S1
by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency
or absence of thought, forced expression, evil choice of
subject, over-accumulation of materials, whether in paint-
ing or literature, the shallow and unreflecting nothingness
of the English schools of art, the strained and disgusting
horrors of the French, the distorted feverishness of the
German : — pretence, over-decoration, over-division of parts
in architecture, and again in music, in acting, in dancing,
in whatsoever art, great or mean, there are yet degrees of
greatness or meanness entirely dependent on this single
quality of repose.
Particular instances are at present both needless and
cannot but be inadequate ; needless, because I suppose
that every reader, however limited his experience of art,
can supply many for himself, and inadequate, because no
number of them could illustrate the full extent of the in-
fluence of the expression. I believe, however, that by
comparing the disgusting convulsions of the Laocoon with
the Elgin Theseus, we may obtain a general idea of the
effect of the influence, as shown by its absence in one, and
presence in the other, of two works which, as far as
artistical merit is concerned, are in some measure parallel,
not that I believe, even in this respect, the Laocoon
justifiably comparable with the Theseus. I suppose that
no group has exercised so pernicious an influence on art as
this, a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived and unnaturally
treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of execu-
tion and accumulation of technical knowledge."*
* I would also have the reader compare with the meagre lines and
contemptible tortures of the Laocoon, the awfulness and quietness of 31.
Angelo's treatment of a subject in most respects similar (the Plague of
the Fiery Serpents), but of which the choice was justified both by the
place which the event holds in the typical system he had to arrange,
and by the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and
its mystical salvation ; sources of sublimity entirely wanting to the
slaughter of the Dardan priest. It is good to see how his gigantic in-
382
SCULPTURE.
In Christian art, it would be well to compare the feel-
ing of the finer among the altar tombs of the middle
ages, with any monumental works after Michael Angelo,
perhaps more especially with works of Roubilliac or
Canova.
In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of
the north transept, there is a monument of Jacopo delta
Quercia's to Ilaria di Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi.
tellect reaches after repose, and truthfully finds it, in the falling- hand
of the near figure, and in the deathful decline of that whose hands are
held up even in their venomed coldness to the cross ; and though irrel-
evant to our present purpose, it is well also to note how the grandeur of
this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater
knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. For whatever knowl-
edge of the human frame there may be in the Laocoon, there is
certainly none of the habits of serpents. The fixing of the snake's head
in the side of the principal figure is as false to nature as it is poor in
composition of line. A large serpent never wants to bite, it wants to
hold, it seizes therefore always where it can hold best, by the extrem-
ities, or throat, it seizes once and forever, and that before it coils, fol-
lowing up the seizure with the twist of its body round the victim, as
invisibly swift as the twist of a whip lash round any hard object it may
strike, and then it holds fast, never moving the jaws or the body ; if its
prey has any power of struggling left, it throws round another coil,
without quitting the hold with the jaws; if Laocoon had had to do with
real serpents, instead of pieces of tape with heads to them, he would
have been held still, and not allowed to throw his arms or legs about.
It is most instructive to observe the accuracy of Michael Angelo in the
rendering of these circumstances ; the binding of the arms to the body,
and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear
the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine -folds.
Note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the
torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom,
which, though justifiably overlooked by the sculptor of the Laocoon, as
well as by Virgil — in consideration of the rapidity of the death by
crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the Florentine's conception,
and would have been better hinted by Virgil than that sickening distri-
bution of venom on the garlands. In fact, Virgil has missed both of
truth and impressiveness every way — the "morsu depascitur" is un-
natural butchery — the "perfusus veneno" gratuitous foulness — the
SCULPTURE.
3S3
I name it not as more beautiful or perfect than other
examples of the same period, but as furnishing an instance
of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rude-
ness of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid
imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which the fashion has
taken place in modern times.* She is lying on a simple
couch, with a hound at her feet, not on the side, but with
the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in
which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive im-
itation of pressure. It is understood as a pillow, but not
mistaken for one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over
" clamores liorrendos," impossible degradation; compare carefully the
remarks on this statue in Sir Charles Bell's Essay on Expression (third
edition, p. 192), where he has most wisely and uncontrovertibly deprived
the statue of all claim to expression of energy and fortitude of mind,
and shown its common and coarse intent of mere bodily exertion and
agony, while he has confirmed Payne Knight's just condemnation of the
passage in Virgil.
If the reader wishes to see the opposite or imaginative view of the
subject, let him compare Wihkelmann ; and Schiller, Letters on
iEsthetic Culture.
* Whenever, in monumental work, the sculptor reaches a deceptive
appearance of life or death, or of concomitant details, he has gone too
far. The statue should be felt for such, not look like a dead or sleep-
ing body ; it should not convey the impression of a corpse, nor of sick
and outwearied flesh, but it should be the marble image of death or
weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe
and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual
armour nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed
mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these : a certain rude-
ness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are
to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and
clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly Gothic types,
but lines so few and grand as to appeal to the imagination only, and
always to stop short of realization. There is a monument put up lately
by a modern Italian sculptor in one of the side cnapels of Santa Croce,
the face fine and the execution dexterous. But it looks as if the per-
son had been restless all night, and the artist admitted to a faithful
study of the disturbed bedclothes in the morning.
384
SCULPTURE.
the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed,
the tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet, there
is that about them which forbids breath, something
which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of
both. The hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded,
but the arms are laid at length 1123011 the body, and the
hands cross as they fall. The feet are hidden by the
drapery, and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not
their tenderness.
If any of us, after staying for a time beside this tomb,
could see, through his tears, one of the vain and unkind
encumbrances of the grave, which, in these hollow and
heartless days, feigned sorrow builds to foolish pride, he
would, I believe, receive such a lesson of love as no cold-
ness could refuse, no fatuity forget, and no insolence dis-
obey. 2 M. P. 67.
h. Of Symmetry and Proportion. In all perfectly
beautiful objects there is found the opposition of one
part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained ; in
animals the balance being commonly between opposite
sides (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the excep-
tion in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head),
but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the
boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays
on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less per-
fect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency to-
wards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and
alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect
symmetry is from their nature impossible or improper, a
balance must be at least in some measure expressed before
they can be be held with pleasure. Hence the necessity
of what artists require as opposing lines or masses in
composition, the propriety of which, as well as their
value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and natural in-
SCULPTURE.
385
vention. Absolute equality is not required, still less ab-
solute similarity. A mass of subdued colour may be
balanced by a point of a powerful one, and a long and •
latent line overpowered by a short and conspicuous one.
The only error against which it is necessary to guard the
reader with respect to symmetry is the confounding it
with proportion, though it seems strange that the two
terms could ever have been used as synonymous. Sym-
metry is the opposition of equal quantities to each other.
Proportion the connection of unequal quantities with each
other. The property of a tree in sending out equal
boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out
shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. In the
human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its
division upwards, proportion.
Vitruvius, presenting the proportions observed in Gre-
cian statues, says : " Nature in the composition of the
human frame has so ordained that naturally and ordinarily
there should be such a proportion that the face, from the
chin to the top of the forehead or roots of the hair, should
be one tenth part of the whole stature ; while the same
proportion is preserved in the hand measured from the
bend of the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. If the
distance from the chin to the roots of the hair be divided
into three parts, one of these terminates at the nostrils, the
other at the eyebrows. The foot is a sixth of the stature ;
the cubit, or distance from the elbow to the tip of the mid-
dle finger, and also the breadth of the chest is a fourth.
In the female figure the height is about one tenth less than
in the male. The Apollo Belvidere is a little more than
seven heads high, and the foot on which he stands is two
and one fifth inches longer than his head. Albert Durer
makes his figures eight heads tall, and the length of
the foot one sixth of their height. The shape of the
Venus is uncommonly slender. Her height is within a
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SCULPTURE.
fraction of five feet, and not more than seven and a half
heads.
Whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way
referable to its expression of the Aristotelian tWr???, that
is to say of abstract justice, I leave the reader to deter-
mine ; I only assert respecting it, that it is necessary to
the dignity of every form, and that by the removal of it
we shall render the other elements of beauty compara-
tively ineffectual : though on the other hand it is to be
observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of
qualities than a quality itself ; and hence symmetry has
little power over the mind, unless all the other constituents
of beauty be found together with it. A form may be
symmetrical and ugly, as many Elizabethan ornaments,
and yet not so ugly as it had been if unsymmetrical, hut
bettered always by increasing degrees of symmetry ; as
in star figures, wherein there is a circular symmetry of
many like members, whence their frequent use for the
plan and ground of ornamental designs ; so also it is ob-
servable that foliage in which the leaves are concentric-
ally grouped, as in the chestnuts and many shrubs — rho-
dodendrons for instance — (whence the perfect beauty of
the Alpine rose) — is f ar nobler in its effect than any other,
so that the sweet chestnut of all trees most fondly and
frequently occurs in the landscape of Tintoret and Titian,
beside which all other landscape grandeur vanishes ; and
even in the meanest things the rule holds, as in the ka-
leidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given to forms alto-
gether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal
opposition ; which orderly balance and arrangement are
essential to the perfect operation of the more earnest and
solemn qualities of the beautiful, as being heavenly in
their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganiza-
tion of sin, so that the seeking of them and submission
to them is always marked in minds that have been sub-.
SCULPTURE.
387
jected to high moral discipline, constant in all the great
religions painters, to the degree of being an offence and
a scorn to men of less timed and tranquil feeling. Equal
ranks of saints are placed on each side of the picture, if
there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a corre-
sponding one on the other, the attendant angels beneath
and above are arranged in like order. The Raffaelle at
Blenheim, the Madonna di St. Sisto, the St. Cicilia, and all
the works of Perugino, Francia, and John Bellini present
some such form, and the balance at least is preserved even
in pictures of action necessitating variety of grouping, as
always by Giotto ; and by Ghirlandajo in the introduc-
tion of his chorus-like side figures, and by Tintoret most
eminently in his noblest work, the Crucifixion, where not
only the grouping but the arrangement of light is abso-
lutely symmetrical. Where there is no symmetry, the
effects of passion and violence are increased, and many
very sublime pictures derive their sublimity from the
want of it, but they lose proportionally in the diviner
quality of beauty. In landscape the same sense of sym~
metry is preserved, as we shall presently see, even to
artificialness, by the greatest men, and it is one of the
principal sources of deficient feeling in the landscapes of
the present day, that the symmetry of nature is sacrificed
to irregular pictnresqueness. 2 M. P., 71.
i. Unity. To the perfection in the beauty in lines, or
colours, or forms, or masses, or multitudes, the appear-
ance of some species of unity is, in the most determined
sense of the word, essential.
First, there is suhjectional unity, or the unity of differ-
ent and separate things subjected to one and the same
influence, as of the clouds driven by the parallel winds,
or as they are ordered by the electric currents — and this
of the unity of the sea waves, and this of the bending and
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SCULPTURE.
undulation of the forest masses ; and in creatures capable
of will, it is the unity of will or of inspiration.
Second, there is the unity of origin, which is of things,
arising from one spring and source, as the unity of broth-
erhood in man ; and this in matter is the unity of the
branches of the trees, and of the petals and starry rays
of flowers, and of beams of light.
Third, there is the unity of sequence, as that of things
that form links in chains, steps in ascent, and stages in
journeys; and this in matter is the unity of communicated
force from object to object, the beauty of continuous lines,
and the orderly succession of motions and times.
Fourth, there is the unity of membership, or essential
unity, which is unity of things, separately imperfect, into
a perfect whole. This is harmony.
But this unity cannot exist between things similar to
each other. Two or more equal or like things cannot be
members one of another, nor can they form one or a
whole thing. Two they must remain, both in nature and
in our conception, so long as they remain alike, unless
they are united by a third, different from both. Thus :
the arms, which are alike each other, remain two arms in
our conception : they could not be united by a third arm ;
they must be united by something which is not an arm,
and which, imperfect without them as they without it,
shall form one perfect body ; nor is unity even thus ac-
complished without a difference and opposition of direc-
tion in the setting on of like members. 2 M/P., 51.
j. Variety. Hence out of the necessity of unity arises
that of variety. Its principle in our nature is the love of
change and the power of contrast. But it is not variety
as such, and in its highest degree, that is beautiful. A
patched garment of many colours is not so agreeable as
one of a single and continuous hue. A forest of all man-
SCULPTURE.
389
ner of trees is poor, compared to a mass of trees of one
species. Therefore it is only harmonious and chordal
variety which is necessary to secure and extend unity that
is rightly agreeable. 21. P., 52.
h. Harmony. Harmony consists neither in likeness nor
difference of parts, but only in that particular imperfec-
tion in each of the harmonizing parts which can only be
supplied by its fellow part. The several parts must make
one complete whole. If one of them be perfect by itself,
the other will be an excrescence. Both must be faulty
when separate, and each corrected by the presence of the
other. If the artist can accomplish this, the result will
be beautiful : it will be a whole, an organized body, with
dependent members; — he is an inventor. If not, let his
separate features be as beautiful, as apposite, or as resem-
blant as they may, they form no whole ; they are two mem-
bers glued together. He is only a carpenter and joiner.
I. Exaggeration. As exaggeration is the vice of all
bad artists, and may be constantly resorted to without any
warrant of imagination, it is necessary to note strictly the
admissible limits.
A colossal statue is necessarily no more an exaggera-
tion of what it represents than a miniature is a diminu-
tion. It need not be a representation of a giant, but a
representation, on a large scale, of a man ; only it is to be
observed, that as any plane intersecting a cone of rays
between us and the object must receive an image smaller
than the object, a small image is rationally and completely
expressive of a larger one; but not a large of a small one.
Hence I think that all statues above the Elgin standard,
or that of Michael Angelo's Night and Morning, are, in a
measure, taken by the eye for representations of giants,
and I think them always disagreeable. The amount of
390
SCTTLPTTTEE.
exaggeration admitted by Michael Angelo is valuable be-
cause it separates the emblematic from the human form,
and gives greater freedom to the lines of the frame. For
notice of his scientific system of increase of size reference
is made to Sir Charles Bell's remarks on the statues of the
Medici Chapel ; but there is one circumstance which Sir
Charles has not noticed — the extremities are exceedingly
small in proportion to the limbs, by which means there is
an expression given of strength and activity greater than
in the ordinary human type, which appears to me to be an
allowance for that alteration in proportion necessitated by
the increase of size ; not but that Michael Angelo always
makes the extremities comparatively small, but smallest
comparatively in his largest works. Such adaptations are
not necessary when the exaggerated image is spectral ; for
as the laws of matter in that case can have no operation,
we may expand the form as far as we choose, only let
careful distinction be made between the size of the thing
represented and the scale of the representation. The can-
vas on which Fuseli has stretched his Satan in the schools
of the Royal Academy is a mere concession to inability.
He might have made him look more gigantic in one of a
foot square. 2 M. P., 204.
m. Anatomy. Such muscular development as is neces-
sary to the perfect beauty of the body is to be rendered ;
but that which is necessary to strength, or which appears
to have been the result of laborious exercise, is inad-
missible. No herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrad-
ing the spiritual creature to suppose it operative through
impulse of bone and sinew ; its power is immaterial and
constant, neither dependent on nor developed by exertion.
Generally it is well to conceal anatomical development as
far as may ; even Michael Angelo's anatomy interferes
with his divinity. How far it is possible to subdue or
SCULPTURE.
391
generalize the naked form I venture not to affirm, but I
believe it is best to conceal it, as far as may , not with
draperies light and undulating, that fall in with and ex-
hibit its principal lines, but with draperies severe and lin-
ear, such as were constantly employed before the time of
Raffaelle. I recollect no single instance of a naked angel
that does not look boylike or childlike and unspiritualized ;
even Fra Bartolemeo's might with advantage be spared
from the pictures at Lucca, and, in the hands of inferior
men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants ;
those of Domenichio, in the Madonna del Rosario, and
Martyrdom of St. Agnes, are peculiarly off ensive studies of
bare-legged children, howling and kicking in volumes of
smoke. Confusion seems to exist in the minds of subse-
quent painters between Angels and Cupids.
n. Bas-relief. The art of bas-relief is to give the effect
of true form on flatness of surface. If nothing - more
were needed than to make first the cast of a solid form,
then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to flat sur-
face;— if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple,
all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole
apple in half, and pin it to the wall : any ordinary trained
sculptor, or even a mechanical workman, could produce
a bas-relief ; but the business is to carve a round thing
out of a, flat thing ; — to carve an apple out of a biscuit ; —
to conquer as a subtle Florentine has conquered his mar-
ble, so as not only to get motion into what is most
rigidly fixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most
narrowly bounded ; and carve Madonna and Child, roll-
ing clouds, flying angels, and space of heavenly air behind
all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch thick
where it is the thickest.
The design in solid sculpture involves considerations of
Weight in mass,
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SCULPTURE.
4.
Balance,
Perspective and opposition,
Projecting forms,
Restraint of those which mnst not project,
such as none but the greatest masters have ever com-
pletely solved, and these not always.
The schools of good sculpture, considered in relation to
projection, divide themselves into four entirely distinct
groups :
1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many-
places, absolutely flat ; and the expression depends greatly
on the lines of its outer contour, and on the fine incisions
within them.
2d. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the
sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete
modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut.
The formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates,
of course, severest obedience to this law.
3d. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted so as to throw
out the forms against a background of shadows.
4th. Full Relief The statue completely solid in form,
and unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected
locally with some definite part of the building, so as to be
still dependent on the shadow of its background and di-
rection of protective line.
The laws of sight and distance determine the proper
depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed ; then observe
what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying
cluster of problems will be offered us. You might at first
imagine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity,
or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be
in regular proportion, as, for instance, if the real depth of
your subject be, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas-
relief an inch, then the parts of the real subject which were
six inches round the side of it would be carved, you might
SCULPTURE.
imagine, at the depth of half an inch, and so the whole
thing mechanically reduced to a scale. But not a bit
of it. Here is a Greek bas-relief of a chariot with two
horses ; your whole subject, therefore, has the depth of two
horses, side by side, say six or eight feet,, your bas-relief
has, on the scale, say the depth of the third of an inch:
Now, if you gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth
of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only the twelfth
of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him
look a mile awaj from the other, and his own forelegs a
mile apart. The Greek has made the near leg of the off
horse project much beyond the off leg of the near horse,
and has put nearly the whole depth and power of his re-
lief into the breast of the off horse, thus giving a most
effective treatment to his perspective, projections and
shadows. A. P., 149.
6. THE SCHOOLS OE SCULPTURE.
The conditions necessary for the production of a perfect
school of sculpture have only twice been met in the his-
tory of the world, and then for a short time; nor for a
short time only, but also in narroio districts, namely, in the
valleys and Islands of Ionian Greece, and in the strip
of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apennine
crests and the sea.
I All other schools, except these two, led severally by
Athens in the fifth century before Christ, and by Flor-
ence in the fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and
the best of them are derivative : these two are consummate
in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others.
And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools are
both of equal rank, as essentially original and indepen-
dent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek,
borrowed much from it; but it would have existed just
ae strongly — and, perhaps, in some respects more nobly —
17*
394
SCULPTURE.
had it been the first, instead of the latter of the two. The
task set to each of these mightiest of the nations was, in-
deed, practically the same, and as hard to the one as to
the other. The Greeks found Phoenician and Etruscan
art monstrous, and had to make them human. The
Italians found Byzantine and Norman art monstrous, and
had to make them human. The original power in the
one case is easily traced ; in the other it has partly to be
unmasked, because the change at Florence was, in many
points, suggested and stimulated by the former school.
But we mistake in supposing that Athens taught Florence
the laws of design; she taught her, in reality, only the
duty of truth.
You remember that I told you the highest art could do
no more than rightly represent the human form. This
is the simple test, then, of a perfect school, — that it has
represented the human form so that it is impossible to
conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, has
been accomplished twice only : once in Athens, once in
Florence. And so narrow is the excellence even of these
two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said of either of
them that they represented the entire human form. The
Greeks perfectly drew, and pjerfectly moidded the body
and limbs ; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance
of their representing the face as well as any great Italian.
On the other hand, the Italian painted and carved the
face insuperably ; but I believe there is no instance of
his having perfectly represented the body, which, by com-
mand of his religion, it became his pride to despise, and
his safety to mortify.
The general course of your study here renders it de-
sirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the
leading principles of Greek sculpture ; but I cannot lay
these before you without giving undue prominence to
some of the special merits of that school, unless I pre-
SCULPTURE.
395
viously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced,
though less disciplined, excellence of Christian art.
In this and the last lecture of the present course," I
shall endeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude
and diagram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible,
the main characteristics of the two schools, completing
and correcting the details of comparison afterwards ; and
not answering, observe, at present, for any generalization
I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer and
more qualified statements.
And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indiffer-
ently of works of sculpture, and of the modes of painting
which propose to themselves the same objects as sculp-
ture. And this, indeed, Florentine, as opposed to Vene-
tian painting, and that of Athens in the fifth century,
nearly always did.
I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the
simplest kind — engravings, or, at least, linear drawings
both ; one on clay, one on copper, made in the central
periods of each style, and representing the same goddess —
Aphrodite. The first is from a patera lately found at
Camirus, authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his
recent catalogue, to the best period of Greek art. The
second is from one of the series of engravings executed,
probably, by Baccio Baldini, in 14S5, out of which I
chose your first practical exercise — the sceptre of Apollo.
I cannot, howrever, make the comparison accurate in all
respects, for I am obliged to set the restricted type of the
* The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine,
though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my
class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not
choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in
fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth
Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the pub-
lished course on Florentine Sculpture.
396
SCULPTURE.
Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside the universal
Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth,
and sea ; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the
Greek, and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both
characteristic. The Greek Terms Urania is flying in
heaven, her power over the waters symbolized by her
being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth by a
single flower in her right hand ; but the Italian Aphrodite
is rising out of the actual sea, and only half risen ; her
limbs are still in the sea, her merely animal strength fill-
ing the waters with their life ; but her body to the loins is
in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky ; her hand is
about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth.
The Terms Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to men,
has power only over lawful and domestic love ; therefore,
she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most
daintily and trimly : her feet delicately sandalled, her
gown spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely
smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves
down her forehead ; and though, because there's such a
quantity of it, she can't possibly help having a chignon,
look how tightly she has fastened it in with her broad
fillet. Of course she is married, so she must wear a cap
with pretty minute pendant jewels at the border; and a
very small necklace, all that her husband can properly
afford, just enough to go closely round the neck, and no
more. On the contrary, the Aphrodite of the Italian,
being universal love, is pure-naked ; and her long hair is
thrown wild to the wind and sea.
1. These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are
only because the artists are thinking of separate "powers /
they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in
feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are
essential, and characterize the two opposed national modes
of mind.
SCULPTURE.
397
First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very
pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one.
That is because a Greek thought no one could possibly
love any but pretty people ; but an Italian thought that
love could give dignity to the meanest form that it in-
habited, and light to the poorest that it looked upon. So
his Aphrodite will not condescend to be pretty.
Secondly. In the Greek Yenus the breasts are broad
and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical
profile ; — (you are allowed on purpose to see the outline
of the right breast, under the chiton) ; — also the right arm
is left bare, and you can just see the contour of the front
of the right limb and knee ; both arm and limb pure and
firm, but lovely. The plant she holds in her hand is a
branching and flowering one, the seed vessel prominent.
These sioris all mean that her essential function is child-
o
bearing.
On the contrary, in the Italian Yenus the breasts are so
small as to be scarcely traceable ; the body strong and
almost masculine in its angles ; the arms meagre and un-
attractive, and she lays a decorative garlaud of flowers on
the earth. These siorts mean that the Italian thought of
love as the strength of an eternal spirit, forever helpful ;
and forever crowned with flowers, that neither know
seed-time nor harvest, and bloom where there is neither
death nor birth.
Thirdly. The* Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and
looks straightforward. Xot one feature of her face is
disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion.
The Italian xVphrodite looks up, her face all quivering
and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The
Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied ; the
Italian incapable of rest ; she has had no thought nor care
for herself ; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the
Greeks ; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with
398
SCULPTURE.
the sea, or clinging to her body ; only the front tress of it
is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and
lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire rest on the
brows, in the early Christian pictures of Pentecost, and
the waving fires abide upon the heads of Angelico's
seraphim.
There are almost endless points of interest, great and
small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. This
binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight
course of one great system of art method, from that
Greek head which I showed you on the archaic coin of
the seventh Century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth
of our own era — nay, when you look close, you will see
the entire action of the head depends on one lock of hair
falling back from the ear, which it does in compliance
with the old Greek observance of its being bent there by
the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her'
shoulders comes from the Athena of Corinth ; the raising
of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana,
changed into the vestal fire of the angels. But chiefly,
the calmness of the features in the one face, and their
anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the charac-
teristic difference in every conception of *the schools, the
Greek never representing expression, the Italian primarily
seeking it; but far more, mark for us here the utter
change in the conception of love ; from the tranquil
guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, ac-
cepting its immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the
agonizing hope of an infinite good, and the ever mingled
joy and terror of a love divine in jealousy, crying, "Set
me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm ;
for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."
2. The vast issues dependent on this change in the concep-
tion of the ruling passion of the human soul, I will en-
deavour to show you on a future occasion : in my present
SCULPTURE.
399
lecture, I shall limit myself to the definition of the temper
of Greek sculpture, and of its distinctions from Floren-
tine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love
or hatred, hope or despair.
These great differences are mainly the following.
3. A Greek never expresses momentary passion ; a
Florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate
object of his skill.
When you are next in London, look carefully in the
British Museum at the casts from the statues in the pedi-
ment of the Temple of Minerva at JEgina. You have
there Greek work of definite date ;— about 600 B.C., cer-
tainly before 580 — of the purest kind ; and you have the
representation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of
the .zEacidse at Troy, with Athena herself looking on.
But there is no attempt whatever to represent expression
in the features, none to give complexity of action or ges-
ture ; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visible tem-
porary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, one
pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes
of attack and defence ; several kneeling to draw their
bows. But all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with
the same smile.
Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal
character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate
condition of beauty. You are startled, I suppose, at my
saying this, having had it often pointed out to you as a
transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you could
distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and
Diana from Juno by her being slender. That is very
true ; but those are general distinctions of class, not spe-
cial distinctions of personal character. Even as general,
they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions, in
fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician — between
a matron and a huntress; but in nowise distinguish the
400
SCULPTURE.
simple-hearted hero from the subtle Master of the Muses,
nor the wilful and fitful girl-goddess from the cruel and
resolute matron-goddess.
There is no personal character in true Greek art : —
abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness,
virtue and vice, — yes : but there is no individuality ; and
the negative holds down to the revived conventionalism
of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how
you are to paint young women, and how old ones ; though
a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age
as the Italian is in his canon of it, — " old women should
be represented as passionate and hasty, after the manner
of Infernal Furies."
" But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they
give ideal beauty ? " So it is said, without contradiction.
But will you look again at the series of coins of the best
time of Greek art, which I have just set before you \
Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful %
Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are
not. The Siren and Arethusa have well-formed and regu-
lar features ; but I am quite sure that if you look at them
without prejudice you will think neither reach even the
average standard of pretty English girls. The Yenus
Urania suggests at first the idea of a very charming per-
son, but you will find there is no real depth nor sweetness
in the contours, looked at closely. And remember, these
are chosen examples ; the best I can find of art current in
Greece at the great time ; and if even I were to take the
celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant,
not one of them excels the Yenus of Melos ; and she, as I
have already asserted, in The Queen of the Air, p. 169,
has nothing notable in feature except dignity and simpli-
city. You need only look at two or three vases of the best
time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in
popular art, not only unattained but unattemtpted ; and
SCULPTURE.
401
finally, — and this yon may accept as a conclusive proof of
Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty — there is
little evidence even in their literature, and none in their
art, of their having ever perceived any beanty in infancy,
or early childhood.
And as the Greek strove only to teach what was true, so,
in his sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was
— Right. He rules over the arts to this day, and will for-
ever, because he sought not first for beauty, not first for
passion, or for invention, but for tightness / striving to
display, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he
dealt with, in its simplicity. That is his specific character
as a Greek. Of course, every nation's character is con-
nected with that of others surrounding or preceding it ;
and in the best Greek work you will find some things that
are still false or fanciful ; but whatever in it is false or
fanciful is not the Greek part of it — it is the Phoenician,
or Egyptian, or Pelasgian }3art. The essential Hellenic
stamp is veracity : — Eastern nations drew their heroes
with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two ; —
Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the
Greeks drew them with men's ; and out of all fallacy, dis-
proportion and indefiniteness, they were, day by day,
resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into
restricted and demonstrable truth.
4. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which
encumbered our thoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek
school into some clearness of its position for you, with
respect to the art of the world. That relation is strangely
duplicate; for on one side Greek art is the root of all
simplicity y and on the other, of all complexity.
a. On one side, 1 say, it is the root of all simplicity. If
you were for some prolonged period to study Greek sculp-
ture exclusively in the Elgin Room of the British Museum,
and were then suddenly transported to the Hotel de Cluny,
402
SCULPTURE.
or any other museum of Gothic and barbarian workman
ship, you would imagine the Greeks were the masters of
all that was grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human,
opposed to the pettiness of the toys of the rest of mankind.
On one side of their work they are so. From all vain
and mean decoration — all weak and monstrous error, the
Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture
them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire
of their living soul. Distinctively from other races, as I
have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the
work of the Greek, to give health to what was diseased,
and chastisement to what was untrue. So far as this is
found in any other school hereafter, it belongs to them by
inheritance from the Greeks, or invests them with the
brotherhood of the Greek. And this is the deep meaning
of the myth of Daedalus as the giver of motion to statues.
The literal change from the binding together of the feet
to their separation, and the other modifications of action
which took place, either in progressive skill, or often,
as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to
stone (a figure carved out of one wooden log must have
necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides),
these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable,
compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures
of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs sepa-
rate enough ; but they are infinitely more dead than the
rude figures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on their
knees. And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the giving of
deceptive life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life.
In this aspect of it, then, I say, it is the simplest and
nakedest of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect,
or rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric.
h. As the simplest, so also it is the most complex of
human art. I told you in my fifth Lecture, showing you
the spotty picture of Yelasquez, that an essential Greek
SCULPTURE.
403
character is a liking for things that are daqypled. And
you cannot but have noticed how often and how preva-
lently the idea which gave its name to the Porch of
Polygnotus, " arod TroucCkr) " — the Painted Porch — occurs
to the Greeks as connected with the finest art. Thus,
when the luxurious city is opposed to the simple and
healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you
find that, next to perfumes, pretty ladies and dice, you
must have in it " iroiKikia^ which, observe, both in that
place and again in the third book, is the separate art
of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the idea of exquisitely
divided variegation or division, both in sight and sound — ■
the " ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's " iroacCkoi
vfjivoi " — runs through the compass of all Greek art-descrip-
tion ; and if, instead of studying that art among marines,
yon were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, your im-
pression of it would be, instead of breadth and simplicity,
one of universal spottiness and cheqneredness, " ev dyyeccv
'Epfcecnv iraynroiKikoi^ ;" and of the artist's delighting in
nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spotted things ;
which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimit-
edly. Indeed, they hold it complimentary even to a trout
to call him a " spotty." Do you recollect the trout in the
tributaries of the Ladon, which Pausanias says were spot-
ted, so that they were like thrushes, and which, the Arca-
dians told him, could speak ? In this last iroitciXia, how-
ever, they disappointed him. " I, indeed, saw some of
them caught," he says, " but I did not hear any of them
speak, though I waited beside the river till sunset."
5. The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all
broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is
divided, delicate, and tremulous ; " variable as the shade, by
the light quivering aspen made." To them, as first leaders
of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of
404
SCULPTURE.
giistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple,
burnishings in dark blue steel ; of the fantasy of the
Arabian roof — quartering of the Christian shield, — rubric
and arabesque of Christian scripture ; in fine, all enlarge-
ment, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the
temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of
Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan
Chapel of the Thorn.
Kot that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as
many as we do ourselves, nearly ; — he died of his mistakes
at last — as we shall die of them ; but so far he was sep-
arated from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched
nations— so far as he was Greek — it was by his rightness.
He lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness
of his land, and the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and
reason, and modesty. He became Grceculus esuriens,
little, and hungry, and every man's errand-boy, by his ini-
quity, and his competition, and his love of tajk. But his
Grsecism was. in having done, at least at one period of his
dominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, use-
ful, and eternally true ; and, as a workman, he verily did,
or first suggested the doing of, everything possible to man.
A. P., Sixth Lecture.
PART III.
ARCHITECTURE.
AEOHITEOTUEE.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
All European architecture, bad and good, old and new,
is derived from Greece, through Rome, and coloured and
perfected from the East. The history of architecture is
nothing but the tracing of the various modes and direc-
tions of this derivation. Understand this once for all : if
you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all
the types of the successive architectural inventions upon it
like so many beads. The Doric and the Corinthian 'orders
are the roots, the one of all the Romanesque, massy-capital-
ed buildings — Norman, Lombard, Bizantine, and what else
you can name of the kind ; and the Corinthian of all Goth-
ic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now
observe : these old Greeks gave the shaft ; Rome gave the
arch ; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft
and the arch, the framework and strength of architecture,
are from the race of Japheth ; the spirituality and sanctity
of it from Ismael, Abraham, and Shem.
There is high probability that the Greek received his
shaft system from Egypt ;* but I do not care to keep this
earlier derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only
necessary that he should be able to refer to a fixed point
of origin, when the form of the shaft was first perfected.
But it may be incidentally observed, that if the Greeks
did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the
three families of the East have each contributed their
* See Plate 1, page 413*.
408 GENERAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
part to its noblest architecture : and Ham, the servant of
the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing member, the
shaft ; Japheth the arch ; Shem the spiritualisation of
both.
I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian,
are the roots of all European architecture. You have, per-
haps, heard of five orders ; but there are only two real
orders ; aud there never can be any more till doomsday.
On one of these orders the ornament is convex : those are
the Doric, Norman, and whatever else you can recollect of
the kind. On the other, the ornament is concave ; those are
Corinthian, Early English, Decorated, and what else you
recollect of that kind. The transitional form, in which
the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phan-
tasms and grotesques altogether indefinite in number and
species.
This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was
clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no par-
ticular result, until they begun to bring the arch into ex-
tensive practical service ; except only that the Doric capital
was spoiled in endeavours to mend it, and the Corinthian
much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very
beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came
Christianity : seized upon the arch as her own ; decorated,
and delighted in it ; invented a new Doric capital to
replace the spoiled Roman one ; and all over the Roman
empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at
hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This
Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of
the time, very fervid and beautiful, — but very imperfect ;
in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong,
child-like light of the imagination, which flames up under
Constantine, illumes all the shores of the Bosphorus
and the Egean and the Adriatic sea, and then gradually,
GENERAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
409
as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
corpse-like. The architecture sinks into a settled form — a
strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion
it expressed ; and so would have remained forever — does
remain, where its languor has been undisturbed. But
rough wakening was ordained for it.
This Christian art of the declining empire is divided
into two great branches, Western and Eastern ; one cen-
tred at Home, the other at Bizantium, of which the one is
the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and
the other, carried, to higher imaginative perfection by
Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as the Bizantine.
But I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two
branches of art together in his mind, they being, in points
of main importance, the same ; that is to say, both of
them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old
Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the
fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen
who could be found — Latins in Italy and Greeks in
Greece ; and thus both branches may be ranged under
the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architec-
ture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the
degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by
Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the
Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms.
1 S. V., 14, § xvii.-xxi.
18
CHAPTER II.
THE VALUE OF LAWS OF ARCHITECTURE.
All written or writable law respecting the arts is for the
childish and ignorant : in the beginning of teaching, it is
possible to say that this or that must or must not be done ;
and laws of colour and shade may be taught, as laws of
harmony are to the young scholar in music. But the
moment a man begins to be anything deserving the name
of an artist, all this teachable law has become a matter of
course with him; and, if, thenceforth, he boast himself
anywise in the law, or pretends that he lives and works by
it, it is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and
that there is no true art or religion in him. For the true
artist has that inspiration in him which is above all law,
or rather, which is continually working out such magnifi-
cent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no-
wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws
perceived and fulfilled in the single stroke of a great
wrorkman, than could be written in a volume. His science
is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by his Maker,
not in anywise communicable or imitable. Neither can
any written or definitely observable laws enable us to do
anything great. It is possible, by measuring and adminis-
tering quantities of colour, to paint a room wall so that it
shall not hurt the eye; but there are no laws by observing
which we can become Titians. It is possible so to measure
and administer syllables, as to construct harmonious verse ;
but there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out
of the poem or the picture, once produced, men may elicit
laws by the volume, and study them with advantage to
THE VALUE OF LAWS OF ARCHITECTURE.
411
the better understanding of the existing poem or picture ;
but no more write or paint another, than by discovering
the laws of vegetation they can make a tree to grow. And
therefore, wheresoever we find the system or formality of
rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as anything else
than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble
art is not even understood, far less reached.
And thus it was with all the common and public mind
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater men,
indeed, broke through the thorn hedges; and, though much
time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin
verses and anagrams, and arranging the framework of
quaint sonnets and dexterous syllogisms, still they tore
their way through the sapless thicket by force of intellect
or of piety ; for it was not possible that, either hi literature
or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind,
so as materially to interfere with its originality; so that in
spite of the rules of the drama we had Shakespeare, and
in spite of the rules of art we had Tintoret — both of them,
to this day, doing perpetual violence to the vulgar scholar-
ship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude. (3 S. Y.,
1067.) And yet, I am very sure that no reader who has
given attention to what I have written in the former
volumes of the " Stones of Venice," more especially to the
tendency of the last chapter of the " Seven Lamps," will
suppose me to underrate the importance or dispute the
authority of law. But art law must be written on the
heart, otherwise its only use can be to guide the simple or
restrain the lawless and vicious. 3 S. v., 105, § lxxxvii.
CHAPTER III.
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
Though in poetry and painting, as wo have seen, original
minds were a law unto themselves, in architecture it was
not so ; for that was the art of the multitude, and was
affected by all their errors ; and the great men who entered
its field, like Michael Angelo, found expression for all the
best part of their minds in sculpture, and made the archi-
tecture merely its shell. So the simpletons and sophists had
their way with it : and the reader can have no conception
of the inanities and puerilities of the writers, who, with
the help of Yitruvius, re-established its " five orders," de-
termined the proportions of each, and gave the various
receipts for sublimity and beauty which have thence-
forward been followed to this day. 3 S. V., 108.
Now there are three good architectures in the world,
and there never can be more, correspondent to these three
simple ways of covering in a space, which is the original
function of all architectures. And those three architect-
ures are pure exactly in proportion to the simplicity and
directness with which they express the condition of roof-
ing on which they are founded. They have many inter-
esting varieties, according to their scale, manner of deco-
ration, and character of the nations by whom they are
practised ; but all their varieties are finally referable to
the three great heads — ■
Fig. 1.
. ox rue J^vriieu.
[ I /V^Sj //\\ -Romanesque.
n n n n ff n tectum of the
B
A. Greeh. Architecture
of the Lintel.
Archi-
tecture of the Round Arch.
C. Gothic. Architecture
of the Gable.
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
413
All the architects in the world will never discover any
other way of bridging a space than these three, the lintel,
the round arch, the gable ; they may vary the curve of the
arch, or curve the sides of the gable or break them down ;
but in doing this they are merely modifying or subdivid-
ing, not adding to the generic form.
The three name's, Greek, Romanesque, and Gothic, are
indeed inaccurate when used in this vast sense, because
they imply national limitations ; but the three architect-
ures may nevertheless not unfitly receive their names from
those nations by whom they were carried to the highest per-
fections. We may thus briefly state their existing varieties.
A. Greeh : Lintel Architecture. — Its simplest style is
Stonehenge ; its most refined, the Parthenon ; its noblest,
the Temple of Karnak.
In the hands of the Egyptian, it is sublime ; in those of
the Greek, pure ; in those of the Roman, rich ; and in those
of the Renaissance Builders, effeminate. 2 S. V., 236, 7.
JV. B. — As Mr. Ruskin nowhere formally presents these
" orders," the Editor deems it well to mention, briefly, the
characteristics claimed for them by Yitruvius.
There are three primary Greek orders, viz. :
The Doric,
The Ionic,
The Corinthian.
Two more were added by the Romans, viz. :
The Tuscan, a modification of the Doric, and
The Composite, a modification of the Corinthian.
An order consists of
"1. A Base,
% A Column,
3. An Entablature.
The separate parts of which are given in the annexed
Plate 1.
414
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
THE GREEK ORDERS.
1. The Doric was the oldest and simplest of the Greek
orders. The shafts of the columns are fluted by twenty
flutes, not quite a semicircle in depth, and separated by
sharp edges, called arrises, and not by a flat fillet. It had
no base, as used by the Greeks.
The height of a Doric column is usually from seven to
eight times its diameter at its bottom. The frieze always
has the triglyph. Plate 2.
2. The Ionic is lighter than the Doric, with shafts
usually though not always fluted, with a fillet between the
flu tii] gs. .
The total height of the column ought not to exceed nine
times its diameter at its base, if it has one. The base was
added by the Romans.
The Ionic capital is distinguished by its spiral line, in
imitation, Yitruvius says (see 1 S. V., Appendix), of a
woman's hair curled. Plate 3.
3. The Corinthian, the lightest and most elegant of the
three orders, has a fluted column, nine or ten times as high
as the diameter of its base. Its capital is its distinguish-
ing feature. It is said that Callimachus, the architect,
saw, at a grave, a basket of toys with a flat tile on top,
around wmich grew acanthus leaves, which, reaching the
tile, fell over in graceful curves. He at once made it the
design of the Corinthian capital.
The Corinthian capital is beautiful because it expands
under the abacus just as nature would have expanded it,
and because it looks as if the leaves had one root, though
that root is unseen. Plate 4.
4. The Composite, first used by the Romans, was a com-
position of the Ionic scroll or volutes, with the acanthus
leaves of the Corinthian. The height of its column is the
same as that of the Corinthian. Plate 5.
414^
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Plate 4. — Roman Corintihan Order.
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
415
5. The Tuscan^ a variety of the Doric, was founded by
the Romans for the basement of buildings, and is thus dis-
tinguished for its massiveness and strength. Its column is
seldom higher than from five-and-a-half to seven times its
diameter at the bottom. Plate 6.
In the Doric temple the influence of the triglyph and
cornice is rather in their simplicity and severity than in
any beauty. The fluting of the column, I doubt not, was
the Greek symbol of the bark of the tree. The beauty in
it is felt to be of a low order. All the beauty it had was
dependant on the precision of its ovolo, a natural curve
of the most frequent occurrence.
B. Romanesque : Round-arch Architecture. — Xever
thoroughly developed until Christian times. It falls into
two great branches, Eastern and Western, or
1. Bizantine,
2. Lombardic,
changing respectively in process of time, with certain helps
from each other, into
1. Arabian Gothic.
2. Teutonic Gothic.
Its most perfect Lombardic type is the Duomo of Pisa ;
its most perfect Bizantine type (I believe) is St. Mark's at
Venice. Its highest glory is, that it has no corruption. It
perishes in giving birth to another architecture as noble as
itself. 2 S. V., 237 ; see also S. L., 86.
C. Gothic : Architecture of the Gable.
1. GENERAL DISTINCTIONS.
This is the daughter of the Romanesque ; and, like the
Romanesque, divided into two great branches, Eastern and
Western, or
1. Pure Gothic,
2. Arabian Gothic,
416
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
of which the latter is called Gothic only because it has
many Gothic forms, pointed arches, vaults, etc., but its
spirit remains Bizantine, more especially in the form of
the roof-mash. Observe the distinction between
1. The roof, seen from below.
2. The roof-mask, seen from above. [By roof, Ruskiii
means the first thing that bridges space, whether lintel or
arch, round or pointed.]
In the Greek, the Western Romanesque, and the
Western Gothic, the roof-mask is the gable ; in the
Eastern Romanesque and Eastern Gothic it is the dome.
The three groups, in the hands of the Western builders,
may be thus simply represented :
rig. 2. a, Greek, a flat or hor-
izontal roof, and a low
gable or roof -mask; b,
Western Romanesque, a
round arch for a roof
and a low gable for a
0 g p roof- mask ; c, Western
or true Gothic, a pointed
arch for a roof proper and a sharp gable for a roof-mask.
Eow, observe, first, that the relation of the roof -mask to
the roof proper, in the Greek type, forms XhvX pediment,
which gives its most striking character to the temple, and
is the principal recipient of its sculptured decoration.
See Doric Temple, Plate 2 (opposite). The relation of
these lines, therefore, is just as important in the Greek as
in the Gothic schools.
Secondly, observe the steepness in the Romanesque and
Gothic gables. This is not an unimportant distinction,
nor an undecided one. The Romanesque gable does not
pass gradually into the more elevated form; there is a
great gulf between the two ; the whole effect of South-
ern architecture being dependant on the use of the flat
A
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
417
Fig.
gable, and all Northern upon that of the acute. I need
not dwell here upon the difference between the lines of
an Italian village or the flat tops of most Italian towers,
and the most peaked gables and spires of the North, at-
taining their most fantastic development, I believe, in
Belgium ; but it may be well to state the law of separa-
tion, namely, that a Gothic gable must have all its angles
aetcte, and the Romanesque one must have the upper one
obtuse ; or, to give a simple practical rule, take any gable,
a or b (Fig. XIII., 2 S. V.,
239), and strike a semicircle
on its base ; if its top
rises above, as at b, it is
Gothic ; if it falls below it,
a Romanesque one ; but the &
best forms in each group
are those whi ch are distinct-
ly steep or distinctly low.
In the figure, f is the aver-
age of Romanesque slope,
and g of Gothic.
But although we do not find a transition from one
school into the other in the slope of the gables, there is
Fig. 4.
I
a o g <p
often a confusion between the two schools in the associa-
tion of the gable with the arch below it. It has just been
IS
413
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
stated that the pure Romanesque condition is the ronnd
arch under the low gable, as in a, next Fig. ; the pnre
Gothic condition is the pointed arch under the high
gable, as in b ; yet in the passage from one style to the
other, we sometimes find the conditions reversed ; the
pointed arch under a low gable, as d, or the round arch
under a high gable, as at c. The form d occurs in the
tombs of Verona, and c in the doors of Yenice.
2 S. V., Fig. XII., p. 240; Diet. Arch., 34.
2. TESTS OF GOOD GOTHIC.
First. Look if the roof rises in a steep gable, high
above the walls. If it- does not do this, there is something
wrong ; the building is not quite pure Gothic, or has been
altered.
Secondly. Look if the principal windows and doors
have pointed arches with gables over them. If not pointed
arches, the building is not Gothic; if they have not any
gables over them, it is either not pure, or not first-rate.
If, however, it has the steep roof, the pointed arch, and
the gable all united, it is nearly certain to be a Gothic
building of a very fine time.
Thirdly. Look if the arches are cusped or aperture
foliated. If the building has met the first two conditions,
it is sure to be foliated somewhere ; but, if not everywhere,
the parts which are unf oliated are imperfect unless they are
large bearing arches, or small and sharp arches in groups,
forming a kind of foliation by their own multiplicity, and
relieved by sculpture and rich mouldings. The upper
windows, for instance, in the east end of Westminster
Abbey are imperfect for want of foliation. If there be
no foliation anywhere, the building is assuredly imperfect
Gothic.
The term foil or feuille being universally applied to
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
419
the separate lobes of leaves, the pleasure received
from them being the same as that which we feel in the
triple, quadruple, or other
radiated leaves of vegeta-
tion, joined with the per-
ception of a severely ge-
ometrical order and sym-
metry. A few of the
most common forms are
represented, unconfused
by exterior mouldings, in
the annexed, Fig. 5.
Foliation, therefore, is
equally descriptive of the
most perfect conditions
both of the simple arch and
the traceries by which, in
later Gothic, it is filled ;
and it is said to be geo-
metrical as its figures can
be formed by the compass.
Fourthly. If the building meets all the first three con-
ditions, look if its arches in general, whether of windows
and doors, or of minor ornamentation, are carried on true
shafts with bases and capitals. If they are, then the build-
ing is assuredly of the finest Gothic style ; and this is all
that is necessary to determine that question. 2 S. V., 251.
I. Gothic Flexibility and Variety of Gothic Schools.
The variety of the Gothic schools is the more healthy
and beautiful, because in many cases it is entirely un-
studied, and results, not from the mere love of change, but
from practical necessity. For in one point of view Gothic
is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as
being that which can fit itself most easily to all services,
AJkXX
***
420
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of
shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it
can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a
staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace
and unexhausted energy ; and whenever it finds occasion
for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without
the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty, — •
subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive
to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief
virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered
ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere
in the real use and value of what they did. If they wanted
a window, they opened one ; a room, they added one ; a
buttress, they built one ; utterly regardless of any estab-
lished conventionalities of external aj3pearance, knowing
(as indeed it always happened) that such daring interrup-
tions of the formal plan would rather give additional
interest to its symmetry than in j ure it, so that, in the best
times of Gothic, a useless window would rather have been
opened in an unexpected place for the sake of surprise,
than a useful one forbidden for the sake of symmetry.
Every successive architect employed upon a great woik
built the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regard-
less of the style adopted by his predecessors ; and if two
towers were raised in nominal correspondence at the sides
of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure to be different
from the other, and in each the style at the top to be
different from the style at the bottom. 2 S. V., 192.
II. Aspiration as a Law of Gothic Schools.
1 need not remind you of the effect upon the northern
mind which has always been produced by the heaven-
pointing spire, nor of the theory which has been founded
upon it of the general meaning of Gothic Architecture
as expressive of religious aspiration. In a few minutes,
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
421
you may ascertain the exact value of that theory, and the
degree in which it is true.
1. The first tower of which we hear as built upon the
earth, was certainly built in a species of aspiration ; but
I do not suppose that any one here will think it was a
religious one. "Go to now. Let us build a tower whose
top may reach unto heaven." From that clay to this,
whenever men have become skilful architects at all, there
has been a tendency in them to build high ; not in any
religious feeling, but in mere exuberance of spirit and
power — as they dance or sing — with ay certain mingling of
vanity — like the feeling in which a child builds a tower of
cards; and, in nobler instances, with also a strong sense
of, and delight in the majesty, height, and strength of the
building itself, such as we have in that of a lofty tree or
a peaked mountain. Add to this instinct the frequent
necessity of points of elevation for watch-towers, or of
points of offence, as in towers built on the ramparts of
cities, and, finally, the need of elevations for the trans-
mission of sound, as in the Turkish minaret and Christian
belfry, and you have, I think, a sufficient explanation of
the tower-building of the world in general. Look through
your Bibles only, and collect the various expressions with
reference to tower-building there, and you will have a
very complete idea of the spirit in which it is for the most
part undertaken. You begin with that of Babel; then
you remember Gideon beating down the Tower of Penuel,
in order more completely to humble the pride of the men
of the city; you remember the defence of the tower of
Shechem against Abimelech, and the death of Abimelech
by the casting of a stone from it by a woman's hand; you
recollect the husbandman building a tower in his vineyard,
and the beautiful expressions in Solomon's Song — " The
Tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus;"
" I am a wall, and my breasts like towers ; " — you
422
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
recollect the Psalmist's expressions of love and delight,
" Go ye round about Jerusalem ; tell the towers thereof :
mark ye well her bulwarks ; consider her palaces, that ye
may tell it to the generation following." You see in all
these cases how completely the tower is a subject of
human pride, or delight, or defence, not in anywise asso-
ciated with religions sentiment ; the towers of Jerusalem
being named in the same sentence, not with her temple,
but with her bulwarks and palaces. And thus, when the
tower is in reality connected with a place of worship, it
was generally done to add to its magnificence, but not to
add to its religious expression. And over the whole of
the world, you have various species of elevated buildings,
the Egyptian pyramid, the Indian and Chinese pagoda,
the Turkish minaret, and the Christian belfry — all of
them raised either to make a show from a distance, or to
cry from, or swing bells in, or hang them round, or for
some other very human reason. Thus, when the good
people of Beauvais were building their cathedral, that of
Amiens, then just completed, had excited the admiration
of all France, and the people of Beauvais, in their jealousy
and determination to beat the people of Amiens, set to
work to build a tower to their own cathedral as high as
they possibly could. They built it so high that it tumbled
down, and they were never able to finish their cathedral
at all — it stands a wreck to this day. But you will not, I
should think, imagine this to have been done in heaven-
ward aspiration. Mind, however, I don't blame the people
of Beauvais, except for their bad building. I think their
desire to beat the citizens of Amiens a most amiable
weakness, and only wish I could see the citizens of Edin-
burgh and Glasgow* inflamed with the same emulation,
* I did not, at the time of the delivery of these lectures, know how
many G-othic towers the worthy Glaswegians have lately built : that of
St. Peter's, in particular, being a most meritorious effort.
IheMsjor&KiaiiF EnjJfpL«.O.S6 Pa* Place, N.Y.
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
423
building Gothic towers instead of manufactory chimneys ;
only do not confound a feeling which, though healthy and
right, may be nearly analogous to that in which you play
a cricket-match, with any feeling allied to your hope of
heaven.
Such being the state of the case with respect to tower
building in general, let me follow for a few minutes the
changes which occur in the towers of northern and southern
architects.
2. Many of us are familiar with the ordinary form of the
Italian bell-tower or campanile (Plate 15). From the
eighth century to the thirteenth there was little change
in that form : * four-square, rising high and without taper-
ing into the air, story above story, they stood like giants in
the quiet fields beside the piles of the basilica or the Loni-
bardic church, in this form {fig. 9.), tiled at the top in a
flat gable, with open arches below, and fewer and fewer
arches on each inferior story, down to the bottom. It is
worth while noting the difference in form between these
and the towers built for military service. The latter were
built as in Jig. 10., projecting vigorously at the top over a
series of brackets or machicolations, with very small win-
dows, and no decoration below. Such towers as these were
attached to every important palace in the cities of Italy,
and stood in great circles — troops of towers — around their
external walls : their ruins still frown along the crests of
every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far
away in the great Lombardic plain, from distances of half-
a-day's journey, dark against the amber sky of the horizon.
These are of course now built no more, the changed
methods of modern warfare having cast them into entire
disuse ; but the belfry or campanile has had a very different
* There is a good abstract of the forms of the Italian campanile, by Mr.
Papworth, in the Journal of the Archaeological Institute, March 1850.
424
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
influence on European architecture. Its form in the plains
of Italy and South France being that just shown you, the
moment we enter the valleys of the Alps, where there is
snow to be sustained, we find its form of roof altered by
the substitution of a steep gable for a flat one."* There are
probably few in the room who have not been in some
parts of South Switzerland, and who do not remember the
beautiful effect of the grey mountain churches, many of
them hardly changed since the tenth and eleventh centuries,
whose poiuted towers stand up through the green level of
the vines, or crown the jutting rocks that border the valley.
3. From this form to "the true spire, the change is slight,
and consists in little more than various decoration, generally
in putting small pinnacles at the angles, and piercing the
central pyramid with traceried windows, sometimes, as at
Fribourg and Burgos, throwing it into tracery altogether :
but to do this is invariably the sign of a vicious style, as
it takes away from the spire its character of a true roof,
and turns it nearly into an ornamental excrescence. At
Antwerp and Brussels, the celebrated towers (one, observe,
ecclesiastical, being the tower of the cathedral, and the
other secular), are formed by successions of diminishing
towers, set one above the other, and each supported by
buttresses thrown to the angles of the one beneath. At
the English cathedrals of Lichfield and Salisbury, the spire
is seen in great purity, only decorated by sculpture ; but I
am aware of no example so striking in its entire simplicity
as that of the towers of the cathedral of Contances in Nor-
mandy. There is a dispute between French and English
antiquaries as to the date of the building, the English being
unwilling to admit its complete priority to all their own
Gothic. I have no doubt of this priority myself; and 1
* The form establishes itself afterwards in the plains, in sympathy
with other Gothic conditions, as in the campanile of St. Mark's at Venice.
IMijor&KnapD tnj.ttf4ititti.tc 56 Part Place.HY
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
425
hope that the time will soon come when men will cease to
confound vanity with patriotism, and will think the honour
of their nation more advanced by their own sincerity and
courtesy, than by claims, however learnedly contested, to
the invention of pinnacles and arches. I believe the
French nation was, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the
greatest in the world ; and that the French not only in-
vented Gothic architecture, but carried it to a perfection
which no other nation has approached, then or since : but,
however this may be, there can be no doubt that the towers
of Coutances, if not the earliest, are among the very earli-
est, examples of the fully developed spire. I have drawn
one of them carefully for you (Plate 16, fig. 11.), and you
will see immediately that they are literally domestic roofs,
with garret windows, executed on a large scale, and in stone.
Their only ornament is a kind of scaly mail, which is
nothing more than the copying in stone of the common
wooden shingles of the house-roof ; and their security is
provided for by strong gabled dormer windows, of massy
masonry, which, though supported on detached shafts, have
weight enough completely to balance the lateral thrusts of
the spires.
Nothing can surpass the boldness or the simplicity of
the plan ; and yet, in spite of this simplicity, the clear
detaching of the shafts from the slope of the spire, and
their great height, strengthened by rude cross-bars of
stone, carried back to the wall behind, occasions so great
a complexity and play of cast shadows, that I remember
no architectural composition of which the aspect is so
completely varied at different hours of the day.* But
the main thing I wish you to observe is, the complete
domesticity of the work; the evident treatment of 'the
church spire merely as a magnified house-roof ; and the
* The sketch was made about 10 o'clock on a September morning.
426
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
proof herein of the great truth of which I have been en-
deavouring to persuade you, that all good architecture
rises out of good and simple domestic work ; and that,
therefore, before you attempt to build great churches and
palaces, you must build good house doors and garret win-
dows. Nor is the spire the only ecclesiastical form dedu-
cible from domestic architecture. The spires of France
and Germany are associated with other towers, even sim-
pler and more straightforward in confession of their na-
ture, in which, though the walls of the tower are covered
with sculpture, there is an ordinary ridged gable roof on
the top. The finest example I know of this kind of tower,
is that on the north-west angle of Rouen Cathedral {fig.
12.); bat they occur in multitudes in the older towns of
Germany ; and the backgrounds of Albert Durer are full
of them, and owe to them a great part of their interest ;
all these great and magnificent masses of architecture
being repeated on a smaller scale by the little turret roofs
and pinnacles of every house in the town; and the whole
system of them being expressive, not by any means of
religious feeling,* but merely of joyfulness and exhilara-
* Among the various modes in which the architects, against whose
practice my writings are directed, have endeavoured to oppose them,
no charge has been made more frequently than that of their self-con-
tradiction ; the fact being, that there are few people in the world who
are capable of seeing the two sides of any subject, or of conceiving how
the statements of its opposite aspects can possibly be reconcileable.
For instance, in a recent review, though for the most part both fair
and intelligent, it is remarked, on this very subject of the domestic
origin of the northern Gothic, that ' ' Mr. Ruskin is evidently possessed
by a fixed idea, that the Venetian architects were devout men, and that
their devotion was expressed in their buildings ; while he will not allow
our own cathedrals to have been built by any but worldly men, who
had no thoughts of heaven, but only vague ideas of keeping out of hell,
by erecting costly places of worship." If this writer had compared the
two passages with the care which such a subject necessarily demands,
he would have found that I was not opposing Venetian to English
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
427
tion of spirit in the inhabitants of such cities, leading
them to throw their roofs high into the sky, and therefore
giving to the style of architecture with which these gro-
tesque roofs are associated, a certain charm like that of
cheerfulness in the human face ; besides a power of in-
teresting the beholder which is testified, not only by the
artist in his constant search after such forms as the ele-
ments of his landscape, but by every phrase of our lan-
guage and literature bearing on such topics. Have not
these words, Pinnacle, Turret, Belfry, Spire, Tower, a
pleasant sound in all your ears ?
The Plates that follow will illustrate the various forms
that Gothic ideas have taken, in doors and the tracery of
windows, from time to time.
piety ; but that in the one case I was speaking of the spirit manifested
in the entire architecture of the nation, and in the other of occasional
efforts of superstition as distinguished from that spirit ; and, farther,
that in the one case I was speaking of decorative features, which are
ordinarily the results of feeling, in the other of structural features,
which are ordinarily the results of necessity or convenience. Thus it
is rational and just that we should attribute the decoration of the
arches of St. Mark's with scriptural mosaics to a religious sentiment ;
but it would be a strange absurdity to regard as an effort of piety the
invention of the form of the arch itself, of which one of the earliest
and most perfect instances is in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the
case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their
designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from
the simplest domestic buildings ; but it is ridiculous to attribute any
great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration,
to those who furnished the funds for the erection of the loveliest tower
in North France, by paying for permission to eat butter in Lent. (Lec-
ture I. on Architecture and Painting. Further about towers or campa-
nile, see Plate 423,
*
CHAPTEK IT.
COMPOSITION.
I. Law .of Principality. — The first thing to be done in
beginning a composition is to determine which is to be the
principal thing. I believe that all that has been written
and taught about proportion, put together, is not to the
architect worth the single rule, well enforced, " Have one
large thing and several smaller things, one principal thing
and several" inferior things, and bind them all together."
Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as be-
tween the heights of stories in good designs for houses ;
sometimes a monarch with a lowly train, as in the spire
and its pinnacles ; the various arrangements are infinite,
but the law is universal — have one thing above the rest,
either by size, office, or interest. Don't put the pin-
nacles without the spire. What a host of ugly church
towers we have in England, with pinnacles at the corners
and none in the middle! How many like King's College
Chapel, Cambridge, looking like tables upside down,
with their four legs in the air ! What ! it will be said,
have not beasts four legs? Yes, but legs of different
shapes, and with a head between them. So they have a
pair of ears, and perhaps a pair of horns ; but not at both
ends. Knock down a couple of pinnacles at either end
in King's College Chapel, and you will have a kind of
proportion instantly. In a cathedral you may have one
tower in the centre and two at the west end, or two at the
west end only, though a worse arrangement, but you
must not have two at the west end and two at the east
end unless you have some central member to connect
them ; and even then, buildings are generally bad which
have large balancing features at the extremities, and small
connecting ones in the centre, because it is not easy to
make the centre dominant. The bird or moth may indeed
THE SCHOOLS OF AKCHITECTUKE.
429
have wide wings, because the size of the wings does not
give supremacy to the wing. The head and life are the
mighty things, and the plumes, however wide, are sub-
ordinate. In fine west fronts with a pediment and two
towers, the centre is always the principal mass, both in
bulk and interest (as having the main gateway), and the
towers are subordinate to it, as an animal's horns are to
its head. The moment the towers rise so InVh as to over-
power the body and centre, and become themselves the
principal masses, they will destroy the proportion unless
they are made unequal and one of them the leading fea-
ture of the cathedral, as at Antwerp and Strasburg. The
purer method is to keep them down in due relation to the
centre, and throw np the pediment into a steep connecting
mass, drawing the eye to it by rich tracery.
This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as well
as to the leading features; it is interestingly seen in the ar-
rangement of all good mouldings ; for further discussion of
which see " Seven Lamps of Architecture," ch. iv., § xxvii.
II. Law of Proportion. — a. Without this principality
above stated there can be no proportion. Wherever pro-
portion exists at all, one member of the composition must
be either larger than, or in some way supreme over, the
rest. There is no proportion between equal things. They
can have symmetry only, and symmetry without propor-
tion is not composition. It is necessary to perfect beauty,
but it is the least necessary of its elements, nor, of course,
is there any difficulty in obtaining it. Any succession of
equal things is agreeable : but to compose is to arrange
unequal things, with some one thing as principal.
b. It must be remembered that proportion is between
three terms at least. Hence as the pinnacles are not
enough without the spire, so neither the spire without the
pinnacles. All men feel this, and usually express their
feeling by saying that the pinnacles conceal the junctior
430
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
of -the spire and tower. This is one reason ; but a more
influential one is, that the pinnacles furnish the third term
to the spire aud tower. So that it is not enough, in order to
secure proportion, to divide a building unequally ; it must
be divided into at least three parts ; it may be into more
(and in details with advantage) ; but on a large scale I find
three is about the best number of parts in elevation, and
five in horizontal extent, with freedom of increase to five
in one case and seven in the other. S. L., 106.
c. Notice the connection of symmetry with horizontal,
and proportion with vertical, division. Evidently there
is in symmetry a sense not merely of equality, but of bal-
ance. Now a thing cannot be balanced by another on the
top of it, though it may by one at the side of it. Hence,
while it is not only allowable, but often necessary, to
divide buildings, or parts of them, horizontally into halves,
thirds or other equal parts, all vertical divisions of this
kind are utterly wrong ; worst into half, next worst in the
regular members which betray the equality. In all fine
spires there are two bands and three parts, as at Salisbury.
The ornamented portion of the tower is there cut in half,
and allowably, because the spire forms the third mass, to
which the other two are subordinate ; two stories are also
equal in Giotto's Campanile, but dominant over smaller'
divisions below and subordinated to the noble third
above. Even this arrangement is difficult to treat ; and
it is usually safer to increase or diminish the height of
the divisions regularly as they rise, as in the Doge's
Palace, whose three divisions are in a bold geometrical
progression ; or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion
between the body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the
campanile of St. Mark's. But at all events to get rid
of equality ; leave that to children and their card houses ;
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCIHTECTUIiE.
431
the laws of nature and the reason of man are alike against
it, in arts as in politics. There is but one thoroughly ugly
tower in Italy that I know of, and that because it is divi-
ded into vertical equal parts, the tower of Pisa.
S. L.,106.
[Further on this principle, see Ruskin's Lectures on Ar-
chitecture, 22.]
III. Law of Masses, or Breadth. — The relative majesty
of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of
their masses than on any other attribute of their design :
mass of everything, of bulk, of light, of darkness, of col-
oar, not mere sum of any of these, but breadth of them ;
not broken light, nor scattered darkness, nor divided
weight, but solid stone, broad sunshine, and starless shade.
S. L., 82.
As the great poem and the great fiction generally affect^
us most by the majesty of their masses of shade, and can-
not take hold of us if they affect a continuance of lyric
sprightliness, but must be serious often, and sometimes
melancholy, else they do not express the truth of this wild
world of ours, so there must be in this magnificent human
art of architecture, some equivalent expression for the
trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery ;
and this it can only give by depth or diffusion of gloom,
by the frown on its front, and the shadows of its recess.
So that Rembrandt ism is a noble manner in architecture,
though a false one in painting: and I do not believe that
ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty
masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its sur-
face. And among the first habits that a young architect
should Learn is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at
a design in its miserable liny skeleton ; but conceiving it
as it will be when the dawn lights on it, and the dusk
leaves it; when its stones will be hot, and its crannies
432
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
cool ; when the lizards will bask on the one, and the birds
build in the other. Let hiin design with the sense of cold
and heat upon him ; let him cut out the shadows, as men
dig wells in unwatered plains ; and lead along the lights, as
a founder does his hot metal ; let him keep the full com-
mand of both, and see that he knows how they fall and
where they fade. All that he has to do must be done by
spaces of light and darkness ; and his business is to see
that the one is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed
up by twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried
like a shallow pool by a noon-day sun.
And that this may be, the first necessity is that the quan-
tities of light or shade, whatever they may be, shall be
thrown into masses, either of something like equal weight,
or else large masses of the one relieved with small of the
ether ; but masses of one or other kind there must be. 'No
design that is divided at all, and is not divided into masses,
can ever be of the smallest value: this great law re-
specting breadth is precisely the same in architecture and
painting. S. L., Chap. III., § 13.
Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses
of light and shade, meaning thereby any large spaces of
either. Nevertheless, it is convenient to restrict the term
" mass " to the portions to which form proper belongs,
and to call the field on which such forms are traced, in-
terval. Thus, in foliage with projecting boughs or
stems, we have masses of light, with intervals of shade ;
and, in light skies with dark clouds upon them, masses of
shade, with intervals of light.
This direction in architecture is still more necessary;
for there are two marked styles dependent upon it ; one in
which the forms are drawn with light upon darkness, as
in Greek sculpture and pillars ; the other in which they
are drawn with darkness upon light, as in early Gothic
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
433
foliation. Now, it is not in the designer's power deter-
in inately to vary degrees and places of darkness, but it is
altogether in his power to vary in determined directions
his decrees of light. Hence the use of the dark mass
characterizes, generally, a trenchant style of design, in
which the darks and lights are both flat, and terminated
by sharp edges ; while the use of the light mass is in the
same way associated with a softened and full manner of
design, in which the darks are much warmed by reflected
lights, and the lights are rounded and melt into them.
The term applied by Milton to Doric bas-relief, " bossy,"
is, as is generally the case with Milton's epithets, the most
comprehensive and expressive of this manner which the
English language contains ; while the term which specifi-
cally describes the chief member of the early Gothic
decoration, feuille, foil, or leaf, is equally significative of
a flat space or shade. s. L., 70-71.
IY. The Laws of Harmonies. — There are two modes in
which any mental or material effect may be increased — by
contrast, or by assimilation.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONTRAST.
Supposing that we have a certain number of features,
or existences, under a given influence ; then, by subject-
ing another feature to the same influence, we increase the
universality, and therefore the effect, of that influence ;
but, by introducing another feature, not under the same
influence, we render the subjection of the other features
more palpable, and therefore more effective. For exam-
ple, let the influence be one of shade (Fig. 6), to which
a certain number of objects are subjected in a and b. To
a we add another feature, subjected to the same influence,
434:
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
and we increase the general impression of shade ; to b we
Fig. 6. add the same feature, not subjected to
m this influence, and we have deepened
I the effect of shade. Now, the princi-
I pies by which we are to be guided in
I the selection of one or other of these
■ means are of great importance, and
must be developed before we can con-
clude the investigation of villa archi-
tecture. The impression produced by
a given effect or influence depends
upon its degree and its duration. De-
gree always means the proportionate
energy exerted. Duration is either into
time, or into space, or into both. The duration of colour
is in space alone, forming what is commonly called extent.
The duration of sound is in space and time ; the space
being in the size of the waves of air, which give depth to
the tone. The duration of mental emotion is in time alone.
Now, in all influences, as is the degree, so is the impres-
sion ; as is the duration, so is the effect of the impression ;
that is, its permanent operation upon the feelings, or the
violence with which it takes possession of our own facul-
ties and senses, as opposed to the abstract impression of
its existence without such operation on our own essence.
For example, the natural tendency of darkness or shade
is, to induce fear or melancholy. Now, as the degree of
shade, so is the abstract impression of the existence of
shade ; but, as the duration of shade, so is the fear of mel-
ancholy excited by it. Consequently, when we wTish to
increase the abstract impression of the power of any influ-
ence over objects with which we have no connexion, we
must increase degree ; but, when we wish the impression
to produce a permanent effect upon ourselves, we must
increase duration. Now, degree is always increased by
THE SCHOOLS OF AKCHITECTUKE.
435
contrast, and duration by assimilation. A few instances
of this will be sufficient. Blue is called a cold colour, be-
cause it induces a feeling of coolness to the eye, and is
much used by nature in her cold effects. Supposing that
we have painted a storm scene, in desolate country, with
a single miserable cottage somewhere in front ; that we
have made the atmosphere and the distance cold and blue,
and wish to heighten the comfortless impression. There
is an old rag hanging out of the window: shall it be red
or blue ? If it be red, the piece of warm colour will con -
trast strongly with the atmosphere ; will render its blue-
ness and chilliness immensely more apparent ; will increase
the degree of both, and, therefore, the abstract impression
of the existence of cold. But, if it be blue, it will bring
the iciness of the distance up into the foreground ; will
fill the whole visible space with comfortless cold ; will
take away every relief from the desolation ; will increase
the duration of the influence, and, consequently, will ex-
tend its operation into the mind and feelings of the specta-
tor, who will shiver as he looks. Now, if we are painting
a picture, we shall not hesitate a moment : in goes the red ;
for the artist, while he wishes to render the actual impres-
sion of the presence of cold in the landscape as strong as
possible, does not wish that chilliness to pass over into, or
affect, the spectator, but endeavours to make the combina-
tion of colour as delightful to his eye and feelings as pos-
sible.* But, if we are painting a scene for theatrical rep-
resentation, where deception is aimed at, we shall be as de-
cided in our proceeding on the opposite principle: in goes
the blue ; for wo wish the idea of cold to pass over into
the spectator, and make him so uncomfortable as to per-
mit his fancy to place him distinctly in the place we de-
* This difference of principle is one leading distinction between the
artist, properly so called, and the scene, diorama, or panorama painter.
436
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
sire, in the actual scene. Again, Shakspeare has been
blamed by some few critical asses for the raillery of Mer-
cutio, and the humour of the nurse, in Romeo and Juliet ;
for the fool in Lear ; for the porter in Macbeth ; the grave-
diggers in Hamlet, &c. ; because, it is said, these bits in-
terrupt the tragic feeling. ~Ho such thing ; they enhance
it to an incalculable extent; they deepen its degree,
though they diminish its duration. And what is the
result ? that the impression of the agony of the individuals
brought before us is far stronger than it could otherwise have
been, and our sympathies are more forcibly awakened ;
while, had the contrast been wanting, the impression of
pain would have come over into ourselves ; our selfish feel-
ing, instead of our sympathy, would have been awakened ;
the conception of the grief of others diminished; and the
tragedy would have made us very uncomfortable, but
never have melted us to tears, or excited us to indignation.
"When he, whose merry and satirical laugh rung in our
ears the moment before, faints before us, with "A plague
o' both your houses, they have made worms' meat of me,"
the acuteness of our feeling is excessive : but, had we not
heard the laugh before, there would have been a dull
weight of melancholy impression, which would have been
painful, not affecting. Hence, we see the grand impor-
tance of the choice of our means of enhancing effect ; and
we derive the simple rule for that choice ; namely, that,
when we wish to increase abstract impression, or to call
upon the sympathy of the spectator, we are to use con-
trast ; but, when we wish to extend the operation of the
impression, or to awaken the selfish feelings, we are to use
assimilation.
This rule, however, becomes complicated where the fea-
ture of contrast is not altogether passive; that is, where we
wish to give a conception of any qualities inherent in that
feature, as well as in what it relieves ; and, besides, it is not
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
437
always easy to know whether it will be best to increase the
abstract idea, or its operation. In most cases, energy, the
degree of inflnence, is beauty ; and, in many, the duration
of inflnence is monotony. In others, duration is sublimity,
and energy painful : in a few, energy and duration are
attainable and delightful together. It is impossible to give
rules for judgment in every case ; but the following points
must always be observed: — 1. When we use contrast, it
must be natural, and likely to occur. Thus, the contrast in
tragedy is the natural consequence of the character of
human existence : it is what wTe see and feel every day of
our lives. When a contrast is unnatural, it destroys the
effect it should enhance. Canning called on a French
refugee in 1794. The conversation naturally turned on
the execution of the queen, then a recent event. Overcome
by his feelings, the Parisian threw himself upon the
ground, exclaiming, in an agony of tears, "La bonne
reine ! la pauvre reine ! " Presently he sprang up, ex-
claiming, " Cependant, Monsieur, il faut vous faire voir
mon petit chien danser." This contrast, though natural in
a Parisian, was unnatural in the nature of things, and
therefore injurious.
2dly. When the general influence, instead of being exter-
nal, is an attribute or energy of the thing itself, so as to
bestow on it a permanent character, the contrast which is
obtained by the absence of that character is injurious and
becomes what is called an interruption of the unity. Thus,
the raw and colorless tone of the Swiss cottage, noticed at
page 36, is an injurious contrast to the richness of the
landscape, which is an inherent and necessary energy in
surrounding objects. So, the character of Italian landscape
is curvilinear; therefore, the outline of the buildings
entering into its composition must be arranged on curvi-
linear principles, as investigated at page 130. p. a.
3dly. But, if the pervading character can be obtained ill
438
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
the single object by different means, the contrast will be
delightful. Thus, the elevation of character which the
hill districts of Italy possess by the magnificence of their
forms, is transmitted to the villa by its dignity of detail,
and simplicity of outline ; and the rectangular interruption
to the curve of picturesque blue country, partaking of the
nature of that which it interrupts, is a contrast giving
relief and interest, while any Elizabethan acute angles, on
the contrary, would have been a contrast obtained by the
absence of the pervading energy of the universal curvi-
linear character, and therefore improper.
4thly. When the general energy, instead of pervading
simultaneously the multitude of objects, as with one spirit,
is independently possessed and manifested by every indi-
vidual object, the result is repetition, not unity: and con-
trast is not merely agreeable, but necessary. Thus, in
Fig. 7, the number of objects, forming the line of beauty,
is pervaded by one simple energy; but in Fig. 8 that
energy is separately manifested in each, and the result is
painful monotony. Parallel right lines, without grouping,
are alwTays liable to this objection; and, therefore, a dis-
tant view of a flat country is never beautiful, unless its
horizontals are lost in richness of vegetation, as in Lom-
bardy ; or broken with masses of forest, or with distant
Fig. 7.— Harmony of Contrast.
hills. If none of these interruptions take place, there is
immediate monotony, and no introduction can be more
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
439
delightful than such a tower in the distance as Strasburg,
or, indeed, than any architectural combination of verticals.
Pig. 8. — Harmony of Analogy.
Peterborough is a beautiful instance of such an adaptation.
It is always, then, to be remembered that repetition is not
assimilation.
5thly. When any attribute is necessarily beautiful, that
is, beautiful in every place and circumstance, we need
hardly say that the contrast consisting in its absence is
painful. It is only when beauty is local or accidental that
opposition may be employed.
6thly. The edge of all contrasts, so to speak, should be as
soft as is consistent with decisive effect. We mean, that a
gradual change is better than instantaneous transfigura-
tion ; for, though always less effective, it is more agreeable.
But this must be left very much to the judgment.
7 thly. We must be very careful in ascertaining whether
any given contrast is obtained by freedom from external, or
absence of internal, energy, for it is often a difficult point
to decide. Thus, the peace of the Alpine valley might,
at first, seem to be a contrast caused by the want of the
character of strength and sublimity manifested in the
hills ; but it is really caused by the freedom from the gen-
eral and external influence of violence and desolation.
These, then, are principles applicable to all arts; without
a single exception, and of particular importance in paint-
ing and architecture. It will sometimes be found that one
rule comes in the way of another ; in which case, the most
440
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
important is, of course, to be obeyed ; but, in general, they
will afford us an easy means of arriving at certain results,
when, before, our conjectures must have been vague and
unsatisfactory. We may now proceed to determine the
most proper form for the mountain villa of England.
CONTRAST, OR FORM FOR THE MOUNTAIN VILLA OF ENGLAND.
We must first observe the prevailing lines of the near
hills : if they are vertical, there will most assuredly be
monotony, for the vertical lines of crag are never grouped,
and accordingly, by our fourth rule, the prevailing lines
of our edifice must be horizontal. In Fig. 9, which is a
village half-way up the Lake of Thun, the tendency of the
hills is vertical ; this tendency is repeated by the build-
ings, and the composition becomes thoroughly bad : but,
at Fig. 27, P. A., we have the same vertical tendency in
the hills, while the grand lines of the buildings are hori-
zontal, and the composition is good. Eut, if the prevailing
lines of the near hills be curved "(and they will be either
curved or vertical), we must not interrupt their character,
for the energy is then pervading, not individual ; and,
therefore, our edifice must be rectangular. In both cases,
therefore, the grand outline of the villa is the same ; but
in the one we have it set off by contrast, in the other by
assimilation ; and we must work out in the architecture of
each edifice the principle on which we have begun. Com-
mencing with that in which we are to work by contrast :
the vertical crags must be the result of violence, and the
influence of destruction, of distortion, of torture, to speak
strongly, must be evident in their every line. We free the
building' from this influence, and give it repose, graceful-
ness, and ease ; and we have a contrast of feeling as well as
of line, by which the desirable attributes are rendered
evident in both objects, while the duration of neither
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
441
energy being allowed, there can be no disagreeable effect
upon the spectator, who will not shrink from the terror of
the crass, nor feel a want of excitement in the gentleness
of the building.
2dly. Solitude is powerful and evident in its effect on
the distant hills, therefore, the effect of the villa should be
joyous and life-like (not flippant, however, but serene) ;
and, by rendering it so, we shall enhance the sublimity of
the distance, as we showed in speaking of the Westmore-
land cottage ; and, therefore, we may introduce a number
of windows with good effect, provided that they are kept
in horizontal lines, and do not disturb the repose which we
have shown to be necessary.
These three points of contrast will be quite enough :
there is no other external influence from which we can
19*
442
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
free the building, and the pervading energy must be com-
municated to it, or it will not harmonize with our feelings ;
therefore, before proceeding, we had better determine how
this contrast is to be carried out in detail.
Our lines are to be horizontal y then the roof must be as
flat as possible. We need not think of snow, because, how-
ever much we may slope the roof, it will not slip off from
the material which, here, is the only proper one ; and the
roof of the cottage is always very flat, which it would not
be if there were any inconvenience attending such a form.
But, for the sake of the second contrast, we are to have
gracefulness and ease, as well as horizontality. Then we
must break the line of the roof into different elevations,
yet not making the difference great, or we shall have visi-
ble verticals. And this must not be done at random.
Take a flat line of beauty, a d, Fig. 10, for the length of
the edifice. Strike a b horizontally from a, c d from d ;
let fall the verticals ; make c f equal m n, the maximum ;
and draw h f. The curve should be so far continued as
that h f shall be to c d as c d to a b. Then we are sure of
a beautifully proportioned form. Much variety may be
introduced by using different curves ; joining paraboles
with cycloids, etc. : but the use of curves is always the
best mode of obtaining good forms. Further ease may be
obtained by added combinations. For instance, strike
another curve {a g b) through the flat line a b; bisect the
~~ ftp2***
^ s
h
-^9
/*
Ji
Fig. 10.
maximum v p, draw the horizontal r s, (observing to make
the largest maximum of this curve towards the smallest
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. 443
maximum of the great curve, to restore the balance), join
r q, s b, and we have another modification of the same
beautiful form. This may be done in either side of the
building, but not in both. Then, if the flat roof he still
found monotonous, it may be interrupted by garret win-
dows,, which must not be gabled, but turned with the curve
a b, whatever that may be. This will give instant humility
to the building, and take away any vestiges of Italian char-
acter which might hang about it, and which would be
wholly out of place. The windows may have tolerably
broad architraves, but no cornices ; an ornament both
haughty and classical in its effect, and, on both accounts,
improper here. They should be in level lines, but grouped
at unequal distances, or they will have a formal and artifi-
cial air, unsuited to the irregularity and freedom around
them. Some few of them may be arched, however, with
the curve a b, the mingling of the curve and the square
being very graceful. There should not be more than two
tiers and the garrets, or the building: will be too high.
So much for the general outline of the villa, in which
we are to work by contrast. Let us pass over to that in
which we are to work by assimilation, before speaking of
the material and colour which should be common to both.
ANALOGY, OR ASSIMILATION OF FORM WITH LANDSCAPE.
The grand outline must be designed on exactly the same
principles ; for the curvilinear proportions, which were
opposition before, will now be assimilation. Of course,
we do not mean to say that every villa in a hill country
should have the form abed; we should be tired to death
if they had: but wc bring forward that form, as an ex-
ample of the agreeable result of the principles on which
we should always work, but whose result should be the
same in no two cases. A modification of that form, how-
444
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
ever, will frequently be found useful ; for, under the de-
pression hf, we may have a hall of entrance and of exercise,
which is a requisite of extreme importance in hill districts,
where it rains three hours out of four all the year round ;
and under g d we may have the kitchen, servants' rooms,
and coach-house, leaving the large division quiet and
comfortable.
Then, as in the curved country there is no such distor-
tion as that before noticed, no such evidence of violent
agency, we need not be so careful about the appearance
of perfect peace, we may be a little more dignified and a
little more classical. The windows may be 'symmetrically
arranged ; and, if there be a blue and undulating distance,
the upper tier may even have cornices ; narrower archi-
traves are to be used ; the garrets may be taken from the
roof, and their inmates may be accommodated in the other
side of the house ; but we must take care, in doing this,
not to become Greek. The material, as we shall see pres-
ently, will assist us in keeping u'nclassical; and not a
vestige of column or capital must appear in any part of
the edifice. All should be pure, but all should be Eng-
lish ; and there should be here, as elsewhere, much of the
utilitarian about the whole, suited to the cultivated coun-
try in which it is placed.
It will never do to be speculative or imaginative in our
details, on the supposition that the tendency of fine scen-
ery is to make everybody imaginative and enthusiastic.
Enthusiasm has no business with Turkey carpets or easy
chairs ; and the very preparation of comfort for the body,
which the existence of the villa supposes, is inconsistent
with the supposition of any excitement of mind : and this
is another reason for keeping the domestic building in
richly productive country. Nature has set aside her sub-
lime bits for us to feel and think in ; she has pointed out
her productive bits for us to sleep and eat in ; and, if we
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
445
sleep and eat amongst the sublimity, we are brutal ; if we
poetise amongst the cultivation, we are absurd. There
are the time and place for each state of existence, and we
should not jumble that which Nature has separated. She
has addressed herself, in one part, wholly to the mind :
there is nothing for us to eat but bilberries, nothing to
rest upon but rock, and we have no business to concoct
pic-nics, and bring cheese, and ale, and sandwiches, in
baskets, to gratify our beastly natures, where Nature never
intended us to eat (if she had, wre needn't have brought
the baskets). In the other pa.rt, she has provided for our
necessities ; and we are very absurd, if we make ourselves
fantastic, instead of comfortable. Therefore, all that we
ought to do in the hill villa is, to adapt it for the habita-
tion of a man of the highest faculties of perception
and feeling ; but only for the habitation of his hours of
common sense, not of enthusiasm ; it must be his dwelling
as a man, not as a spirit ; as a thing liable to decay, not
as an eternal energy ; as a perishable, not as an immortal.
Keeping, then, in view these distinctions of form be-
tween the two villas, the remainina- considerations relate
equally to both.
We have several times alluded to the extreme richness
and variety of hill foregrounds, as an internal energy to
which there must be no contrast. Rawness of colour is to
be especially avoided, but so, also, is poverty of effect. It
will, therefore, add much to the beauty of the building, if,
in any conspicuous and harsh angle or shadowy moulding,
we introduce a wreath of carved leaf- work, in stone, of
course. This sounds startling and expensive ; but we are
not thinking of expense: what ought to be, not what can
be afforded, is the question. Besides, when all expense in
shamming castles, building pinnacles, and all other fantas-
ticisms, has been shown to be injurious, that which other-
wise would have been wasted in plaster battlements, to do
446
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
harm, may surely be devoted to stone leafage, to do good.
Now, if there be too much, or too conspicuous, ornament,
it will destroy simplicity and humility, and everything
which we have been endeavouring to get ; therefore, the
architect must be careful, and had better have immediate
recourse to that natural beauty with which he is now en-
deavouring to assimilate. When Nature determines on
decorating a piece of projecting rock, she begins with
the bold projecting surface, to which the eye is naturally
drawn by its form, and (observe how closely she works by
the principles which were before investigated) she finishes
this with lichens, and mingled colours, to a degree of deli-
cacy, which makes us feel that we never can look close
enough ; but she puts in not a single mass of form to at-
tract the eye, more than the grand outline renders neces-
sary. But, where the rock joins the ground, where the
shadow falls, and the eye is not attracted, she puts in bold
forms of ornament, large leaves and grass, bunches of
moss and heather, strong in their projection, and deep in
their colour. Therefore, the architect must act on pre-
cisely the same principle : his outward surfaces he may
leave the wind and weather to finish in their own way;
but he cannot allow Nature to put grass and weeds into
the shadows; ergo, he must doit himself ; and, whenever
the eye loses itself in shade, wherever there is a dark and
sharp corner, there, if he can, he should introduce a wreath
of flower-work. The carving will be preserved from the
weather by this very propriety of situation : it would have
mouldered away, had it been exposed to the full drift of
the rain, but will remain safe in the crevices where it is
required; and, also, it will not injure the general effect,
but will lie concealed until we approach, and then rise up,
as it were, out of the darkness, to its duty ; bestowing on
the dwellings that finish of effect which is manifested
around them, and gratifying the natural requirement of
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
447
the mind for the same richness in the execution of the
designs of men, which it has found on a near approach
lavished so abundantly, in a distant view subdued so beau-
tifully into the large effects of the designs of nature.
Of the ornament itself, it is to be observed that it is not
to be what is properly called architectural decoration
(that which is " decorous," becoming, or suitable to) ;
namely, the combination of minor forms, which repeat
the lines, and partake of the essence of the grand design,
and carry out its meaning and life into its every, member :
but it is to be true sculpture ; the presenting of a pure
ideality of form to the eye, which may give perfect con-
ception, without the assistance of colour : it is to be the
stone image of vegetation, not botanically accurate, indeed,
but sufficiently near to permit us to be sure of the in-
tended flower or leaf. Not a single line of any other
kind of ornament should be admitted, and there should be
more leafage than flower-work, as it is the more easy in
its flow and outline. Deep relief need not be attempted,
but the edges of the leafage should be clearly and deli-
cately defined. The cabbage, the vine, and the ivy are
the best and most beautiful leaves : oak is a little too stiff,
otherwise good. Particular attention ought to be paid to
the ease of the stems and tendrils ; such care will always
be repaid. And it is to be especially observed, that the
carving is not to be arranged in garlands or knots, or any
other formalities, as in Gothic work ; but the stalks are to
rise out of the stone, as if they were rooted in it, and to
fling themselves down where they are wanted, disappear-
ing again in light sprays, as if they were still growing.
All this will require care in designing; but, as we have
said before, we can always do without decoration ; but, if
we have it, it must be well done. It is not of the slightest
use to economise ; every farthing improperly saved does a
shilling's worth of damage; and that is getting a bargain
448
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
the wrong way. When one branch or group balances
another, they must be different in composition.' The same
group may be introduced several times in different parts,
but not when there is correspondence, or the effect will be
unnatural ; and it can hardly be too often repeated, that
the ornament must be kept out of the general effect, must
be invisible to all but the near observer, and, even to him,
must not become a necessary part of the design, but must
be sparingly and cautiously applied, so as to appear to
have been thrown in by chance here and there, as Nature
would have thrown in a bunch of herbage, affording
adornment without concealment, and relief without inter-
ruption.
COLOUR OF BUILDING AND LANDSCAPE.
So much for form. The question of colour has already
been discussed at some length, in speaking of the cottage ;
but it is to be noticed, that the villa, from the nature of
its situation, gets the higher hills back into a distance
which is three or four times more blue than any piece of
scenery entering into combination with the cottage ; so
that more warmth of colour is allowable in the building,
as well as greater cheerfulness of effect. It should not
look like stone, as the cottage should, but should tell as a
building on the mind as well as the eye. White, there-
fore, is frequently allowable in small quantities, par-
ticularly on the border of a large and softly shored lake,
like Windermere and the foot of Loch Lomond ; but
cream-colour, and putty-colour, and the other varieties of
plaster colour, are inexcusable. If more warmth is re-
quired by the situation than the sun will give on white,
the building should be darkened at once. A warm, rich
grey is always beautiful in any place and under every
circumstance ; and, in fact, unless the proprietor likes to
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
449
be kept damp like a travelling codfish, by trees about his
house and close to it (which, if it be white, he must have,
to prevent glare), such a grey is the only colour which
will be beautiful, or even innocent. The difficulty is to
obtain it ; and this naturally leads to the question of ma-
terial. If the colour is to be white, we can have no orna-
ment, for the shadows would make it far too conspicuous,
and we should get only tawdriness. The simple forms
may be executed in anything that will stand wet ; and
the roofs, in all cases, should be of the coarse slate of the
country, as rudely put on as possible. They must be kept
clear of moss and conspicuous vegetation, or there will be
an improper appearance of decay ; but the more lichen-
ous the better, and the rougher the slate the sooner it is
coloured. If the colour is to be grey, we may use the
grey primitive limestone, which is not ragged on the
edges, without preparing the blocks too smoothly ; or the
more compact and pale-coloured slate, which is frequently
done in Westmoreland ; and execute the ornaments in
any very coarse dark marble. Greenstone is an excellent
rock, and has a fine surface, but it is unmanageable. The
greyer granites may often be used with good effect, as
well as the coarse porphyries, when the grey is to be par-
ticularly warm. An outward surface of a loose block
may be often turned to good account in turning an angle,
as the colours which it has contracted by its natural ex-
posure will remain on it without inducing damp. It is
always to be remembered, that he who prefers neatness to
beauty, and who would have sharp angles, and clean sur-
faces, in preference to curved outlines and lichenous
colour, has no business to live among hills.
Such, then, are the principal points to be kept in view
in the edifice itself. Of the mode of uniting it with the
near features of foliage and ground, it would be utterly
useless to speak : it is a question of infinite variety, and
450
THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE.
involving the whole theory of composition, so that it.
would take up volumes to develope principles sufficient to
guide us to the result which the f eeliug of the practised
eye would arrive at in a moment. The inequalities of
the ground, the character and colour of those inequalities,
the nature of the air, the exposure, and the consequent
fall of the light, the quantity and form of near and dis-
tant foliage, all have their effect on the design, and should
have their influence on the designer, inducing, as they do,
a perfect change of circumstance in every locality. Only
one general rule can be given, and that we repeat. The
house must not be a noun substantive, it must not stand
by itself, it must be part and parcel of a proportioned
whole : it must not even be seen all at once ; and he who
sees one end should feel that, from the given data, he can
arrive at no conclusion respecting the other, yet be im-
pressed with a feeling of a universal energy, pervading
with its beauty of unanimity all life and all inanimation,
all forms of stillness or motion, all presence of silence or
of sound.
A NEW GLOSSAM
OF
ART TERMS,
EXPLANATORY AND CEITICAL.
A.
Abacus. — The plate or tile above the capital on which rests the archi-
trave.
Accessories. — Nearly every work of art, independent of the principal
figures, has objects which, without being indispensably necessary
to the subject, essentially contribute to the beauty and perfection
of the whole, and which are, in some degree, explanatory of the
subject, as architecture, drapery, furniture, dogs, cats, to be in
short, anything that carries and harmonizes colour, fills up blank
spaces, forms contrasts, balances masses, and helps lead the eye
round the picture. Some painters introduce unnecessary acces-
sories. Paul Veronese often offended in this respect; so did
Rubens, and so do generally the Dutch and Flemish painters.
Hogarth was exceedingly ingenious in his accessories, though he
sometimes overloaded them.
Accidental Points. — In perspective, vanishing points that do not fall
on the horizontal line.
Achromatic. — Wanting colour.
Aerial Perspective is to the hue of objects what Linear Perspective
is to their form. The atmosphere modifies colour and outline.
Allegory needs not, as the parable, an interpretation to be brought to
it from without, since it contains its interpretation within itself,
and as the allegory proceeds the interpretation proceeds with it,
hand in hand. Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory in writing ;
Cole's four pictures of the Voyage of Life, Raphael's ' ' School of
Athens " in the Vatican are allegorical paintings ; and Michael
Angelo's statues of Day and Night on the tomb of the Medici
at Florence, are allegorical statues.
452
GLOSSARY.
Almery. — A place to keep sacred vessels.
Alcove. — A recess, usually set off by columns.
Alto Relievo. — High relief.
Ambo. —A pulpit or raised platform.
Amphipro style. — A building having a portico at both ends.
Amphitheatre. — An elliptical theatre, or two theaties built end bo
end.
Ancones. — Modillions placed vertically.
Aisles. — Wings or sides of the nave.
Ant^e. — Square pillars or pilasters attached to the wall, with capitals
different from the associated columns.
Antique.— Precious relics of antiquity.
Apophyge. — A small facite, by which the shaft is attached to the fillet
of the base.
Apse. — The round or polygonal end of a church behind the altar.
Apteral. — A temple without columns at the ends.
Arabesque. — Ornaments with which the Arabs adorned the walls, ceil-
ings, and floors of their buildings ; fruits, flowers, mathematical
figures ; in short, everything except the forms of men and animals,
which were forbidden to be represented by Mahomet.
Architecture. — The art of building. The Greeks had five orders,
called so from the order or proportion of their columns, and the
Goths, or western people, had their styles, named from their deco-
rations, as the Early English, Geometrical, Perpendicular, and
Flamboyant.
Architrave. — A beam; that part of the entablature which lies im-
mediately upon the capital or head of the column.
Archivolt. — The interior face of an arch between the imposts.
Area. — An open space within a building.
Areostyle. — An arrangement of columns, when four diameters are
allowed between them.
Arris. — A meeting of two surfaces producing an angle.
Art. — Art is not nature, nor can it equal nature. Fine Art, says Iius-
kin, is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go
together. Great Art is nothing else than the type of strong and
noble life. All great art is delicate. Greatness in art is that which
conveys to the mind of the spectator the greatest number of the
greatest ideas. Power in art is the doing of much with restricted
means.
Astragal. — A semicircular moulding.
Attitude. — The position of an animated figure. With several figures
the attitudes must be different. See Composition, Grouping.
Astylar. — Without columns.
GLOSSARY.
453
Attic. — A room above the cornice.
^Esthetic. — The doctrine of the sense, generally confined to matters of
taste.
B.
Background. — The field or space of a picture which surrounds the
figures in historical subjects or portraits, and to the different plans
in the distance in landscape painting*, and must be in unison with
the subject. See text, " Background."
Balcony. — A projection from the wall supported by consoles or pillars,
and surrounded by a balustrade.
Baluster. — A small pillar supporting a rail.
Balance. — Colours are balanced when by opposition they are so neutra-
lized that no one appears principal or predominant.
Balustrade. — A connected range of balusters.
Bambocciate. — Paintings representing fairs, drolleries, and village
feasts, called genre painting by the French.
Band. — A moulding with a square profile.
Bandlet. — A very narrow band.
Baptistry. — A chapel for the rite of baptism.
Bargeboard. — A board generally used on gables where the roof ex-
tends over the walls.
Bartizan. — A turret over the roof and within the parapet.
Base. — The lower part of a column.
Basilica. — A town or court hall ; a cathedral ; a palace.
Bas-relief. — Figures which have a very slight projection from the
ground are said to be in has or low relief. It admits of a great
number of characters, and may be called sculptured painting.
BATTLEMENT. — Indentations on the top or parapet of a wall.
Batter. — A wall not built in a perpendicular direction.
Bay. — An opening between piers, beams, mullions of windows, the ribs
of a groined roof. A recess in a chamber.
Bay-window. — A projecting window lighting a recess.
Bed-moulding. — The moulding between the cornice and the frieze.
Belvidere. — A prospect tower or turret above a building ; an obser-
vatory.
Bema. — The platform for speakers ; a pulpit.
Bbnetier. — A vessel for holy water at the church door.
Bodegones. — A Spanish term for pictures of inanimate objects, as
earthen vessels, dead game, etc.
Boss. — A carved ornament at the intersection of the ribs in a groined
roof.
454
GLOSSARY.
Bloom. — A mildew effect on pictures.
j Bracket. — A projection from the face of a wall to carry sculpture or
support a weight.
Branches. — The ribs of a groined roof.
Breadth. — An abundance of one thing in one place, as of lights or
darks or colours, and is always indicative of a master. When the
lights are massed, the darks must be massed to support them.
While there must be no emptiness, there must be no evident detail.
There are details that are essential, and there are details that are
not essential. The breadth of the forearm of Michael Angelo's
Moses is destroyed by the anatomical details. Haydon says, ' ' There
is no doubt that breadth without detail proves more comprehensive
than detail without breadth ; but it is not a balance of evils we
seek, but a principle of perfection." To secure breadth a principal
part must be made predominant, and parts that are secondary
must be kept in due subordination, and thus detail in its technical
sense is opposed to breadth.
Broach. — A spire or polygonal pyramid.
Broken Colours are mixed colours. In nature as in art there is but
little colour that is not broken. If inharmonious colours are mixed,
the hue is said to be "foul " or dirty.
Buttress. — A projection on the exterior of a wall between the windows
to strengthen the piers, and at angles, to resist the thrust of the
arches within.
C.
Cable. — The partial filling up the lower part of the fluting of a column.
Caissons. — Sunk panels in ceilings or soffits.
Cameo. — Gems cut in relief, or raised, while intaglio refers to a figure
sunk.
Camayeu. — Monochrome. Painting in one colour. The pictures of
Polidori Caravaggio, for example, by their heavy brown tint give
the impression of monochrome painting, and with all their perfec-
tion are but pictures en camayeu.
Camp ana. — The part of a Corinthian capital on which the leaves are
placed.
Campanile. — A round or square tower for bells, detached from the
church ; as the leaning tower at Pisa, the tower at Florence, Venice,
Bologna.
Canopy. — An ornament over tombs and altars, projecting from the walls
or supported by columns.
Capital. — The head of a column.
GLOSSARY.
455
Caricature.— The epigram or wit of painting. Gilray, Cruikshank,
and Doyle established a school of caricature.
Cartoon. — Design on paper, in full size, pierced in the prominent out-
lines with pin-holes so as to be transferred to walls for fresco.
Casement. — The frame of a window ; also a moulding.
Caryatides. — Figures of women used for columns.
Catherine Wheel Window. — A wheel window with rich tracery.
Cavetto.— A hollow moulding, one-quarter of a circle.
Chamfer. — A corner or angle cut off.
Chaniry. ) ^ smarj building attached to a cathedral or large church.
Chapel.— \
Charged. — Anything extravagant. This does not refer to that neces-
sary exaggeration which is sometimes required in colour, form, or
expression to suit locality.
Chevron, or Zigzag. — A Norman moulding.
CniAROSCURO. — The lights and darks of a picture.
Choir. — The front part of the chancel for the singers.
Cinquefoil. — A five-leaved Gothic ornament for tracery.
Colonnade. — A row of columns supporting an entablature.
Column. — A round pillar having a base, a shaft, and a capital.
Colour, Colourists. — See text.
Clere Story. — The upper windows in a Gothic church.
Cloister. — A corridor or covered passage-way or walk round an inte-
rior area ; a monastery.
Composition. — See text.
Contour. — See text, "Outline."
Contrast. — The opposite of repetition. There is the contrast of light
and shade which constitute chiaroscuro : contrast of the primary
colours red, yellow, and blue, or of these primaries with their
secondaries or complementaries : red with green, yellow with pur-
ple ; blue by orange or brown ; .contrast in the movement of differ-
ent figures, and even in the different parts of the same figure ; an-
other in the age, sex, or passions of the different personages. Thus
each figure is frequently in contrast with the others in the same
group, and the several groups are contrasted with each other. The
judicious arrangement of this contrast or opposition forms one of
the greatest requisites of a fine work of art.
Coping. — A sloping stone on the top of a wall to throw off the rain-
water.
CORBEL. — A projection from the surface of a wall to carry a weight,
and generally ornamented.
Cornice. — The upper part of an entablature.
Correctness. — Correctness of design, as it relates to the beauty of art,
456
GLOSSARY.
consists in the exact observance of the just proportions of the
figure or building. This has no reference to the effect of locality.
Corridor. — A gallery or open communication to different parts of a
house.
Crenelle. — The openings of an embattled parapet.
Crocket. — An ornament resembling a bunch of leaves, chiefly used at
the angles of pinnacles or canopies.
Crypt. — A vault, generally under the eastern end of a church.
Cupola. — A small room, sometimes called a lantern, placed on the top
of a dome.
Cusps. — The points where two circles meet that form the trefoils,
quatrefoils, etc.
Cyma. — A moulding, convex below and concave above.
D
Dado, or Die. — The middle member of a pedestal.
Decorative Art is the being fitted for a fixed place. There is no ex-
isting highest-order art but is decorative. The best sculpture yet
produced has been the decoration of a temple front ; the best
painting, the decoration of a room. Raphael's best doing is merely
the fresco or wall-colouring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican,
and his cartoons were made for tapestries. Correggio's best doing
is the fresco decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma ;
Michael Angelo's, of a ceiling in the Pope's private chapel ; Tinto-
retto's of a ceiling and side-wall belonging to a charitable society at
Venice ; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts
not even on the inside, but on the outside, of the common brick
and plaster walls of Venice. Decorative art, in nature and es-
sence, is its being fitted for a definite place. Portable art, inde-
pendent of all place, is, for the most part, ignoble art. Very fre-
quently the highest compliment you can pay a cabinet picture is to
say, "It is as grand as a fresco."
Demitint is not simply a half tint, but any tint harmonizing a picture ;
any colour that serves as a passage from one tint to another.
Dentil. — Small blocks in the entablature resembling teeth.
Design means the art of imitating, by a trace or outline, the form of
the object presented to the view. With respect to the human fig-
ure it must be, 1, correct, or with anatomical exactness; 2, appro*'
priate. Rembrandt violates this when, in " Christ Scourged," he
represents Jews by the portraits of Dutchmen. 3. There must be
unity of design, or but one subject.
GLOSSARY.
457
Diapered. — Arabesque or flower-wall decoration.
Diastyle. — Columns placed three diameters apart.
Dipteral. — A temple with double range of columns all around.
Distance. — The extreme boundary of view in a picture.
Distemper. — Painting- with water-colours mixed with white of egg or
glue, as sizeing, to make the color adhere. Distemper is painting on
dry plaster ; fresco on wet.
Dodecastyle. — A temple with twelve columns in front.
Dome. — An arched or vaulted roof, springing from a polygonal, circu-
lar, or elliptical base.
Donjon, or Keep. — A massive tower in ancient castles, usually near
the centre. It contained the principal rooms. Beneath were the
prisons ; hence called dungeons.
Dormer is the story in the roof of a house ; hence a dormer-window
is a window on the slope of a roof or spire.
Drapery. — 1. The folds must conform with the movement of the
figure. 2. In historical painting the folds should be large and
few, because the grandeur of the forms produces broad and simple
masses of light and shadow, — drapery being meant to cover, not to
hide the figure. 3. Drapery should be suited to the age, character,
and rank of the figure.
Drip. — A beveiled moulding above or below an opening to shed rain.
Dryness implies a harshness and formality in the outline, and a want
of mellowness in the colouring, frequently seen in the work of
young artists.
Dungeon. — A prison in the basement of a donjon.
E.
Echinus. — An egg-shaped ornament in the Ionic capital.
Elegance is a quality of mingled grace and beauty, as shown espe-
cially in the figures of Correggio.
Elevation. — An upright plan of a building.
Emijrasure, or Crexelle. — A splayed opening in a wall.
Enamel painting is done on gold and copper metal by burning in the
colours.
Encarpus. — The festoons of fruits and flowers on a frieze.
Encaustic is painting with a wax medium fixed upon the canvas or
panel by heat.
ENTABLATURE. — The horizontal parts — the architrave, frieze, and cor-
nice— resting on the column.
ENTASIS. — The middle of a perfect column slightly swells, to prevent
the appearance of being thinner than it really is.
20
458
GLOSSARY.
Eustyle. — Columns placed two diameters and a quarter apart — es-
teemed by the ancients as the most elegant distance.
Exaggeration. — Art is not nature, but is driven to exaggeration to
represent nature. Sunlight cannot be painted, but something like
the effect of it may be represented. See 2 M. P. 203.
Execution. — Euskin says, 1 M. P. : "By the term execution I under-
stand the right mechanical use of the means of art to produce a given
end. The first quality is truth ; the second, simplicity ; the third,
mystery ; the fourth, inadequacy ; the fifth, decision; the sixth,
velocity. It is the same as handling, penciling, etc.
Expression is the human frame under some sentiment, and is either 1,
positive, as when the expression is suitable to any character by itself ;
2, relative, as when in itself it is bad, but good in its connection —
as in Eapkaels St. Michael Discomfiting the Evil One. Acting un-
der the influence of Omnipotence he vanquishes the demon with-
out the expression of an effort. This was sublime as the minister
of the Deity, but would have been ridiculous as a mere man.
F.
Facade. — The principal front of a building.
Fascia. — The flat surface of an architrave, etc.
Fan-tracery. — A vault with the ribs radiating like those of an open
fan, as in the chapel of Henry VII., Westminster.
Fillet. — A small square member dividing a moulding.
FlNiAL. — The ornament which crowns a pinnacle or canopy.
Flamboyant Architecture. — Window tracery with the mullions
aspiring and winding upwards like flames.
Flutings. — Perpendicular channels in the shaft of a column.
Flying-buttress. — An arch springing from a pier to a wall to support
the wall.
Foil- arch. — An arch formed of a series of small arches.
Foliation. — Ornaments in imitation of leaves, flowers, etc.
Foreground. — The front part of a picture.
Foreshortening is one of the most difficult studies in the art of design,
and constitutes the excellence of the master. Auy object is fore-
shortened when its end is presented to the eye instead of the side
or full length.
Fresco. — Painting on wet plaster in water-colours.
jtiuct. — A sort of bordering or ornamental work laid on a flat sur-
face.
Frieze. — In the entablature or horizontal construction ^supported by
GLOSSARY.
459
columns, the lower part is called the architrave ; the middle, the
frieze ; and the upper, the cornice.
a.
Gable is the triangularly headed roof which is at the end of a wall.
In Grecian architecture it is called a pediment.
Gable-window. — A window in a gable, generally the largest in the
building.
Gargoyle. — A grotesque water-spout at the roof.
Generalization, says Ruskin, Pref. 1 M. P., xxxiv.,as the word is
commonly understood, is the act of a vulgar, incapable, and un-
thinking mind. An animal must be either one animal or another
animal ; it cannot be a general animal, or it is no animal ; and so a
rock must be either one rock or another rock ; it cannot be a general
rock, or it is no rock. It is just as impossible to generalize granite
and slate as it is to generalize a man and a cow.
Genre-Painting. — Pictures of domestic life and manners — small pic-
tures of character dramatically represented, as Hogarth's, which, for
want of a definite character, are classed together as of a certain
kind or genre (pronounced jar).
Genre-sculpture. — All odd conceits in marble are so named.
Glypus. — Channels. Triglyphs are three channels in a Doric frieze.
Gradation. — In architecture, gradation goes hand in hand with the rules
of proportion and perspective ; in painting, gradation of colour and
light is needed to express depth and relief, to define distances, and
to show the state of the atmosphere. Gradation is in all colours,
forms, and sounds.
Grissaille. — In grey. An ink-sketch.
Groin. — The lines formed by the intersection of two or more vaults.
Group. — See text.
Guillociie. — A kind of ornament composed of undulating lines, and
parallel in their colours to each other.
H.
Hammer-beam. — A beam in Gothic architecture which projects from
the wall in the place where a tie-beam would be.
Handling is the manner of execution by which the artist produces
finish ; it is the method of manipulation peculiar to each artist in
the use of his pencil.
Hanging-style. — That to which the hinges of doors and windows arc
fixed.
460
GLOSSARY.
Harmony. — The principal means of producing- effect. It consists in
the unity, connection, similarity, and agreement of one part with
another, under the relations of form, light, and colour. Parallelism
or repetition is an element of harmony, and also of monotony.
Harmony of Chiaroscuro is when the lights and shades are in the
same general strength. Harmony of Colours is a repose of tone with-
out sameness of tint throughout the picture. Repose is harmony.
Hem. — The spiral projecting part of an Ionic capital.
Heptastyle. — A building with seven columns in front.
Hexastyle. — A building with six columns in front.
Horizontal Line. — See Perspective, in text.
Hovel. — A niche or canopy for a statue.
Hue. — A mixture of two or more primary colours.
Hypcethral. — Having no roof.
I.
Ideal. — The ideal is that which unites in one form all the excellences
found only in different individual forms, as the Medicean Venus.
This, considered as the ideal, is not a portrait statue of an individual
model, but is an aggregate of many models, each of which contrib-
uted its peculiar excellence. Ruskin says, " Any work of art which
represents, not a material object, but the mental conception of a
material object, is, in the primary sense of the word, ideal. Raphael
said. ' To paint a beautiful woman I must see several.' "
Imitation is such a resemblance as to make anything to so look like
what it is not as nearly to deceive. See this fully discussed, 1 M.
P. , ch. iv.
Impasto. — The thickness or thinness of paint. Rembrandt and Salvator
Rosa used thick ; Raphael and Guido, so thin that the threads of
the canvas and crayon outline may be seen through it.
Impost. — The point of junction between an arch and its pier or col-
umn.
Intaglio. — Figures cut into the material used for seals, etc.
Intercolumniation. — The space between the columns of a temple or
portico.
Interpenetration is a principle of great technical value in composi-
tion. It consists in carrying portions of light into the principal
masses of shade, and placing small spaces of dark upon light into
proper balance and relation to each other. It is, in fact, contrast
artfully contrived, and its success depends on proportion and bal-
ance. The principle refers to an exchange of colours also, carrying
the warm colours into cold colours, and cold into warm.
GLOSSARY.
461
J.
Jube. — A gallery or rude loft over the choir, to which was generally at-
tached a pulpit.
K.
Keep. — The central tower of a castle.
Keeping. — An attention to the proper subserviency of tone and colour
in every part of a picture, so that the general effect is harmonious
to the eye, all parts keeping together. When this is unattended to,
a harshness is produced which gives improper isolation to indi-
vidual parts, and the picture is said to be out of keeping.
Knob. — The boss at the crowning of a groin.
Key-stone. — The central stone at the top of an arch.
Keng-post. — The middle post in a roof.
L.
Lectern. — A desk at which the Scripture lessons are read.
Lintel. — A horizontal beam over a doorway or window.
Llnear Perspective, in contradistinction to aerial perspective, is
that art which mathematically determines the gradation which
every line and angle in a building should take in a picture in refer-
ence to a vanishing point.
Llne op Beauts'. — The ideal line formed by a graceful figure of any
kind. The wavy line.
Line of Grace. — The serpentine line.
Loggia.— A covered space with open sides.
Loop. — A small narrow window.
Louvre. — A window in a turret.
M.
MACHICOLATIONS. — Openings in a parapet, set out on corbels, through
which missels may be dropped on assailants below.
MACHINISTS. — Painters remarkable for gaudiness of colour, fluttering
draperies, and unnatural exaggeration.
Manner. — 1. A peculiarity of habit, whether good or bad, by which an
artist's work may be known. 2. In a more special sense the man-
462
GLOSSARY.
ner of a master is nothing but his peculiar way of choosing-, imag-
ining, and representing the subjects of his pictures. It includes
what are called his style and handling ; that is, the ideal part,
and the mechanical part. The style of a painter may be known
by that which is peculiar to Mm, just as that of a writer may be
known by his handwriting, fashion of words, choice of subjects,
and turn of phrases.
Mannered. — An affectation of style.
Mannerism. — The excess or obtrusion of a style.
Mannerist. — One who practises a marked peculiarity of style
adopted, improperly, for all subjects.
Masses. — To mass a part is to give prominence to principal things and
to reject those details which cut it up into little pieces.
Members. — Different parts of an entablature, moulding, etc.
Metope. — The space between the triglyph on the frieze of the Doric
order.
Merlon.— The solid part of an embattled parapet.
Miserere. — Choir seats for the aged clergy.
Mitre. — Anything joined at an angle of forty-five degrees.
Mitre. — The head-covering of a bishop, cardinal, etc.
Modillion. — A horizontal bracket under a Corinthian cornice.
Module. — The semi-diameter of a column.
Monotriglyphic .- — Triglyphs only over each column.
Morbidezza. — The soft and delicate flesh- colouring of Titian and Cor-
reggio.
Mtjlliqn. — The tracery and perpendicular divisions in the interior
framework of a Gothic window.
Mutules. — A flat modillion ornament under a Doric cornice.
N.
Nattjralisti. — Artists who strictly copied nature, as the pre-Ea-
phaelite.
Naos, or Cella. — The interior of a temple.
Naye. — The long central part of the church for the people. It is from
the Latin nans, a ship.
Newel. — The post at the foot of stairs.
Nimbus. — The nimbus is of Pagan origin, used to ornament the heads
of the statues of their emperors and divinities, and to protect them
from the filth of birds, and with much difficulty, about the eleventh
century, was admitted into Christian art. The aureola was for the
whole body. Among the miniatures of the JSortus Deliciarum,
GLOSSARY.
463
painted in 1180, is a representation of the Celestial Paradise, in
which the heads of the Virgin, the apostles, the martyrs, and con-
fessors wear the golcUn nimbus ; those of the prophets and the
patriarchs, the white or silver nimbus; those of the saints who
strove with temptation, the red nimbus ; those who were married
have the nimbus green ; while the beatified penitents have theirs
of yellowish white. The nimbus is variously formed, but generally
round.
O.
Ogee. — The French for Gothic. A moulding with contrasted curves,
convex on the upper side, and concave at the under.
Olive. — A mixture of purple and green.
Oratory. — A private chapel for prayer.
Order. — An entire column, consisting of base, shaft, and capital, with
an entablature. There are strictly three ; the Doric, the Ionic,
and the Corinthian. The Tuscan and the Composite are but modi-
fications of the other three.
Oriel. — A window projecting from a wall, used originally as a little
oratory, a place for private prayer.
Ordonnaxce. — The arrangement of a design.
Outline.— See text.
Ovolo. — A moulding, the quarter of a round of a circle.
P.
Palette. — A piece of wood, usually of walnut or mahogany, upon
which the painter lays the pigments with which he paints his pic-
tures. To "set the palette " is to lay upon it the pigments in cer-
tain order, selecting them according to the key in which the picture
is to be painted, and arranging them very much as the colours are to
be distributed on the canvas.
Parapet. — A breastwork around a roof or wall.
Pastel. — Coloured crayons. Pastel paintings have too soft and mealy
a look, or moulder by the natural disintegration of the chalk.
Pasticcio. — An original picture closely after the manner of another
artist.
Pedestal. — A base, die, and cornice, supporting a statue, and some-
times a column.
PEDIMENT. — The obtuse gable over the portico of a classic temple, sup-
ported by columns.
Pendant. — A hanging ornament on roofs or ceilings.
464
GLOSSAEY.
Pentastyle. — A portico of five columns.
Pentacle. — A five-pointed star or double triangle ornament, the sym-
bol of the Trinity.
Penthouse. — A covering- or canopy over a door or window, or stairs.
Perches. — Brackets in churches, for images or candlesticks.
Peripteral. — A temple with columns on all sides.
Peristyle. — A colonnade around the interior of a square.
Piazza. — Arcades ; or an open area or square surrounded by arcades.
Picturesque. — Romantic scenery, or the variety of light and shade,
colour, and broken surfaces. In architecture a ruin. No new build-
ing can be picturesque.
Pier. — A wall between two windows ; the two legs of an arch — the
supports of a bridge.
Pigment. — The vegetable, animal, and mineral coloured materials used
in painting ; they are opaque, and hide all beneath them, or trans-
parent, and combine when laid one above another, as transparent yel-
low over a blue ground produces green, etc.
Pilaster. — A square shallow pillar, engaged or attached to a wall.
Pillar. — Any round or polygonal shaft, disengaged from the wall,
and not conformed in the proportions of a column of the classical
orders, used to support an arch or pediment.
Pinnacle. — A small spire or pointed termination to towers, turrets,
and buttresses.
Pix. — A small vessel to contain the consecrated wafer or host.
Plan. — A map of a building.
Plinth. — The block under the base of a column.
Podium. — A running pedestal, supporting a series of columns round a
building. A stylobate.
Point of distance. See text.
Point of sight. See text.
Porch. — A small covered entrance into a building.
Portable Art. — Statues or cabinet pictures as distinguished from
frescoes.
Portico. — The vestibule of a temple ; a covered walk.
Pre-Raphaelites. — A school of modem artists who profess to follow
the mode of study and expression adopted by the early painters
who nourished before the time of Raphael, and whose principle
was that of absolute uncompromising truth in all that it does,
obtained by working everything down to the most minute detail
from nature, and from nature only; or, as must have happened, not
prettily might have happened, in contradistinction to the style or
rendering of any particular school of art. Every pre-Raphaelite
landscape background is painted to the last touch, and in the open
GLOSSARY.
405
air, from the thing itself. Every pre-Eaphaelite figure, however
studied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person.
Every minute accessory is painted in the same manner. This is
the main pre-Raphaelite principle.
Primary Colours. — Red, blue, and yellow.
Principality. — A leading idea. See text.
Pronaos. — The vestibule of a temple.
Proscenium. — The front part of the stage before the curtain of a
theatre.
Proportion. — A srdtable relation of height to breadth ; symmetry; a
balance of equal horizontal parts.
Propyleum. — A vestibule to the gates of a building, as at Athens.
Prostyle. — A building with columns in front only.
Purlins. — Horizontal timbers sustaining the common rafters.
Pulvinated. — A convex instead of a flat frieze.
Pycno style. — Columns one and a half diameters apart.
Q.
Quadrangle. — A square or court surrounded by buildings.
Quatrefoil. — An ornament of four leaves formed by four points in a
circle called cusps.
Quoins. — The corners, sometimes with ornamented stones.
R.
Rails. — In framing the pieces horizontal to the perpendicular stiles.
Raking Cornices. — The inclined cornices of a pediment.
Relievo. — The projection of an architectural ornament, either high or
low relief.
Renaissance. — Literally new birth. A term applied to the revival of
classic art and literature in the fifteenth century, resulting, so far as
decoration is concerned, from a discovery by Raphael of the paint-
ings in the then recently exhumed Thermae of Titus, of classic
original.
Respond.— A pilaster or half pier to sustain an arch.
Re re -dos. — The screen at the back of the altar ; sometimes applied to
the screen in front of the choir, upon which the rood or crucifix
was placed.
Rib. — The mouldings of ceilings, vaults and groins.
Ridge. — The top of the roof.
Rood. — A crucifix.
20*
466
GLOSSARY.
Rood-loft. — The top of the screen for the rood.
Hose Window. — A circular window in which the mullions converge
like the spokes of a wheel, sometimes called Catherine wheel.
Russet. — Orange and purple mixed.
S.
Schools of Art. — Certain modes of drawing and painting of some
great master, and followed by his pupils, have led to the founda-
tion of well-defined " schools." A new line of subjects can hardly
be said to originate a school. But Raphael in his power of expres-
sion, Titian in his force of colour, Rembrandt in centralizing light,
and Turner in his original treatment of landscape, may be said to
have been masters, and given something new to art, as teachers
and patterns to students.
I. — The Florentine School, or the school of Expression, founded by
Fiesole and Masaccio. This school diverged into different styles,
consisting of 1. Such as studied exact natural truth, like the pre-
Raphaelites now, led by Ghirlandajo. 2. Such as combined with
such truth a species of poetic treatment, as Fra Filippo Lippi,
Botticelli and Gozzoii. 3. Such as adopted a sculpturesque treat-
ment of the figure, as seen in the works of Verrochio. To this
school belonged Da Vinci and Michael Angelo.
II. — The Roman School, or the school of Form, led by Raphael and
adorned by G-iulio Romano and Marratti, Mazzolina, Zucchero, and
Baraccio.
III. — The Venetian School, or the school of Colour, led by Titian and
distinguished by Tintoretto and Paul Veronese.
IV. — The Lombard or Bolognian School, or the school of the Eclectics,
founded by the Caracci. Its aim was to " adopt the design of the
Roman, with the colour of the Lombard school, adding the motion
and shade of that of Venice ; join the just symmetry of Raphael
with the power of Michael Angelo, the purity of Correggio, the
truth of Titian, the decorum and solidity of Tebaldi, the learned
invention of Primaticcio, and a little of Parmegiano's grace P Ludo-
vico Caracci and his cousins, Agostino and Annibale Caracci, and
Correggio, Guido Rene, Guercino, Giardano and Nicholas Poussin
distinguished this school.
V. — The German School was founded by the versatile genius of Albert
Durer, and numbered in its disciples Holbein and Mengs. It was
pre-Raphaelite, adhering closely to nature, as is seen in its modern
representatives, Cornelius, Kaulbacli, and Overbeck.
GLOSSARY.
407
VI. — The Flemish School combines with the German after the middle of
the sixteenth century. The Van Eycks began it. Its great glorie3
centre in Rubens and Van Dyck. Teniers was also of it.
VII. — The Dutch School had Rembrandt for its glory. Its great artistic
excellences were mainly bestowed on unexalted subjects. Ostade,
Gerard Dow, Paul Potter, Jan Steen, Terburg and Wo overmans,
Berghem, Both, Hobbema and Van de Velde, and a host of others,
were of this school.
VIII. — The Spanish School, while it possesses great power, has for its
characteristic a certain gloom and wHdness belonging to the national
mind. The painters of this school have been divided into three
principal schools, local rather than characteristic. Velasquez was
of the Madrid school, Murillo of Seville, and Ribera, known in
Italy as Spagnoletto, from Valencia. Alurillo is known most by
his "Assumption," in the Louvre, and Ribera by the horribleness
of his subjects.
IX. — The French School is illustrious through its Claude Lorraine, Gas-
par Poussin, Watteau, Le Brun, David, Gericauit, Delaroche, Ingres,
Vernet, Ary Scheffer, Rosa Bonheur, Gerome — the number is
legion.
X. — The English School may be said to have been founded by Hogarth.
Its greatest names are Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, West,
Wilkie, Lawrence, and Turner.
Scolia.— A hollow moulding, chiefly used in the base of the Ionic
column.
SCUMBLING. — The same as glazing. It is done by colours transpa-
rent and diaphanous, having but little body, which are thinly
scumbled with a fitch pencil over colours that are more staring, in
order to bring them down and sweeten them into a harmony with
those about them.
Shaft.— That part of the column between the base and the capital.
Sketch. — A perfect but incomplete drawing.
Soffit. — The under surface of any arch, lintel, or projecting mould-
ing or member.
SPANDREL. — The triangular space between an arch and the right angle
above it.
Spire. — The pyramidical structure crowning a tower or turret.
Splay. — The expansion given to doors and windows by slanting their
sides.
Stalls. — Elevated seats on the sides of a choir, with canopies over
them, for the clergy.
Still-life. — Pictures of fruits, flowers, game, furniture, etc.
468
GLOSSARY.
Stipple. — Painting with the point of a pencil by dots and short
strokes.
Study. — A carefully finished record in form, or colour and form, of the
whole or some part of a picture or a single object. A sketch, as
distinguished from a study, wall generally mean the completion of
a stage of the whole 'picture, or a part of it, as a study is the whole
of a part. A study is a finished drawing, as of a head, a hand,
or a limb,* etc.
Stump. — A roll of soft leather paper or cloth, cut tapering, and used
with the powder of the crayon in drawing.
Style. — The manner peculiar to a school or an artist in composition,
drawing, and colouring. Winkelmann assigns to Grecian art four
styles. 1. The ancient style, or that which preceded Phidias ; 2.
The grand style, or that which he established ; 3. The graceful
style of Praxiteles and Apelles ; 4. The imitative style of subse-
quent and worthless artists.
Stylobate. — An uninterrupted base or continuous pedestal on which
a line of columns is placed.
Supporting. — 1. Of a figure. Supporting a figure is said of the inter-
position of objects, or even the effects of chiaroscuro, between
parts that would otherwise appear insulated, or be thrown forward
in too separate and distinct relief from the ground, making a gap
in the group to which the figure belongs, and rendering the effect
of the composition meagre. This fault of emptiness is obviated by
a skilful adjustment of draperies, by a happy arrangement of ob-
jects in perspective or otherwise, which fill up the bare spots, but
without obtrusion, so that they are felt to be there rather than re-
marked, or, finally and simply, by a learned management of light
and shadow. 2. Supporting colour. Colours are said to be sup-
ported by similar tints adjacent, but inferior in brilliancy, as blues
by purples, crimsons by reddish browns, and yellows by orange.
Observe, the supporting tints must not only be similar, though in-
ferior in brilliancy, but they must be adjacent. When introduced
in different parts of the^ picture, colour is not supported, but
echoed.
Symmetry. — Equality or balance of parts horizontally placed.
Systyle. — Columns placed two diameters apart.
T.
Tabernacle. — A canopy over seats, for the clergy and choir.
Tetrastyle. — A portico with four columns in front.
GLOSSAEY.
469
Text. — Any colour reduced by white.
Tone. — The prevailing- tint or shade of colour.
Torso. — The human trunk without limbs, used especially of that of
Hercules in the Vatican.
Torus.— A round moulding at the base of columns.
Tracery. — The ornamental work in the head of a window or screen.
Transept. — The arms of the cross in a cruciform church.
Transom. — A horizontal bar dividing a window.
Trefoil. — An ornament representing the three leaves of a flower,
formed within a circle.
Triglyph. — Three vertical channels in a Doric frieze.
Truss. — Truss means to tie. The thrust or spread of a roof or arch
may be resisted by an outside buttress resisting the compression,
or by the tension of a truss tying its feet together, like a string on
the ends of a bow.
Tudor Flowers. — An upright flower employed for open parapets.
Turret — Small towers placed at the angles of buildings.
V.
Volute. — The spirals on an Ionic capital.
AN ALPHABETICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL
PAINTERS, SOULPTOES, AND ARCHITECTS,
PAINTERS AND PICTURES
BEFEBEED TO IN
BUSKIN' S MODERN PAINTERS,
BY LETTERS AND FIGURES.
NATION. NAME AND PBOFESSION. BOEN. DIED.
Gr. Agatharcus, the inventor of perspective
scenery in theatres Painter B. c. 480
Gr. Ageldas Senator f. B. c. 5th cent.
Gr. Agesander (sculptor of "Laocoon and his
Children") Sculptor B. c. 5th cent.
Ital. Albano, Francis ("the painter of the Gra-
ces") Painter 1578 1060
Ital. Alberti, Leo Baptist, a Florentine Pa., Sc. &, Archit 1400 1490
Ital. Albertinelli, Mariotto Painter 1520
Gr. Alcamenes (pupil of Phidias) Scntytor f . B. c. 450
Scotch. Allan, Sir William Painter
Amer. Allston, Washington Poet &, Histor. Painter . .1779 1843
Ital. Angelo, Michael (Buonarotti), a pre-emi-
nent Pa., Sc. & Architect 1474 1563
Ital. Angelo, Michael (Caravaggio) Painter 1569 1609
Ital. Angelico da Fiesole Painter 1387 1445
Angel choirs of, ii. 219 ; attained the highest beauty, ii. 184 ;
cramped by traditional treatment, ii. 124 ; decoration of, ii. 214 ;
distances of, iv. 347 ; finish of, ii. 82, hi. 126 ; his hatred of fog,
iv. 53; influence of hills upon, iv. 350; introduction of portrai-
ture in pictures by, ii. 119, iii. 35 ; his purity of life, iii. 74 ; spir-
itual beauty of, iii. 35 : treatment of Passion subjects by, ii. 127 ;
unison of exprcssional with pictorial power in, iii. 30 ; contrast
between, and Wouvermans, v. 298 ; contrast between, and Sal-
vator, v. 399. Pictures referred to— Annunciation, ii. 171 ; Cru-
cifixion, i. 81, ii. 215; Infant Christ, ii. 217; Last Judgment, i.
83: Last Judgment and Paradise, u, 21 \\ iii. 59; Spirits in Pri-
son at the Feet of Christ, fresco in St. Mark's, ii. 55 (note) ; St.
Dominic of Fiesole, ii. 55; Vita di Christo, ii. 214.
Gr. i Apelles, the most celebrated of ancient
painters Painter f. b. C. 330
Gr. Apollodorus, an Athenian Painter f. b. c. 408
Ital. Appiani, of Milan Painter 1754 1817
Gr. Aristides, of Thebes Painter f. b. c. 240
472
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NATION.
Fr.
Ital.
Eng.
Flem.
Ital.
Eng.
Irish.
Ital.
Ital.
Ital.
Eng.
Ital.
Flem.
Flem.
Eng.
Butch.
Fr.
Swiss.
Eng.
Ital.
Dutch.
Dutch.
Flem.
Ital.
Eng.
Ital.
Ital.
Eng.
NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN.
Andran, Gerard, a celebrated Histor. Engraver 1640
Baccio, Delia Porta (known as San Marco) Painter. : 14(59
Bacon, John Sculptor 1740
Balen, Henry Van Painter 1560
Bandinelli, Baccio Senator 1487
Cacus, ii. 181 ; Hercules, ii. 181.
Banks, Thomas Sculptor 1745
Barry, James Painter 1741
Bartolini Engraver.
Bartolomeo, Fra, di St. Marco l3ainter 1469
Introduction of portraiture by, ii. 11 9. Pictures referred to —
Last Judgment, ii. 178 ; St. Stephen, ii. 218.
Basaiti. Marco 1588
Open skies of, i. S3. Picture— St. Stephen, ii. 218.
Batoni, Pompey Painter 1708
Beechy, Sir Wm Landscape Painter 1753
Bella, Stephano Delia, a Florentine Engraver 1610
Bellini, Gentile 1421
Architecture of the Renaissance style, i. 101, 106 : introduction
of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119.
Bellini, Giovanni 1426
Finish of, ii. 82 ; hatred of fog, iv. 53 ; introduction of portrai-
ture in pictures, ii. 119 ; landscape of, i. 84, iv. 36 ; luminous
skies of, ii. 43 ; unison of expressional and pictorial power in,
iii. 30 ; use of mountain distances, iv. 347 ; refinement and gra-
dation, i. 84. Pictures referred to — Madonna at Milan, i. 84;
San Francesco della Vigna at Venice, i. 84; St. Christopher, ii.
119 : St. Jerome, ii. 211 ; St. Jerome in the Church of San
Chrysostome, i. 84.
Berghem, Mcolas Engraver 1624
Landscape, Dulwich Gallery, i. 37, iii. ISO, v. 297.
Bird. Edward Painter 1772
Blacklock, drawing of the inferior hills, i. 303.
Blake, William Painter & Engraver 1757
Illustrations of the Book of Job, iii. 102.
Bonifazio 1491
Camp of Israel, iii. 325 ; what subjects treated by, v. 235.
Both, John and Andrew Painters 1610
Failures of, i. 194, v. 331.
Bourdon, Sebastian Painter & Engraver 1616
Bourgeoise, Sir Francis (born in London). Painter 1756
Boydell, John (a printseller, and lord
mayor of London) Engraver 1719
Bramante D'Urbino, Francis L. (1st of St.
Peter's Church) Architect 1444
Brentel, Francis Painter f. 1635
Brill, Matthew Painter 1550
Bronzino 1511
Base grotesque, iii. 102. Pictures referred to — Christ Visiting
the Spirits in Prison, ii. 55.
Bruges, John of, or John Van Eyck Painter 1370
Buonarotti, Michael Angelo Painter, Sculptor & Ar . .1474
Anatomy interfering with the divinity of figures, ii. 216 ; con-
ception of human form, ii. 122, 124 ; completion of detail, iii.
126 ; finish of, ii. 82 ; influence of mountains upon, iv. 349 ; use
of symbol, ii. 210 ; repose in, ii. 68 (note) ; impetuous execution
of, ii. 183 (note) ; expression of inspiration by, ii. 204. Pictures
referred to — Bacchus, ii. 182 (note) ; Daniel, i. 62 ; Jonah, ii.
197 ; Last Judgment, ii. 180, 182 ; Night and Day, ii. 203, iii.
100 ; Pieta of Florence, ii. 182 ; Pieta of Genoa, ii. 82 ; Plague
of the Fiery Serpents, ii. 68 (note) ; St. Matthew, ii. 182 ; Twi-
light, i. 33 ; Vaults of Sistine Chapel, i. 30, 33.
Burnett, James Landscape Painter 1788
Cagliari, Paul (known as Paul Veronese),
a celebrated Painter 1532
Cagliari, Benedict, Carletto, and Gabriel,
brothers and sons of Paul.
Callcott, Sir A. W Landscape Painter. 1779
Trent, i. 186.
DIED.
1703
1517
1799
1632
1559
1805
1805
1517
1630
1787
1839
1684
1501
1516
1683
1819
1826
1553
1650 & 56
1671
1811
1804
1514
1584
1580
1441
1563
1816
1588
1844
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 473
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
Gr. Callimachus Sculptor db Architect, f . b.c. 510
Ital. Cambiaso, Lucus, a Genoese Painter 1527 1585
Ital. Canaletto, Anthony, a Venetian Landscape Painter 1697 1718
False treatment of water, i. 336 ; mannerism of, i. 109 ; painting
in the Palazzo Manfrini, i. 197 ; Venice, as seen by, i. 109 ; works
of, v. 207.
Ital. Canova, Antonio Sculptor 1757 1822
Unimaginative work of, ii. 1S1 ; Perseus, i. 62.
Ital. Caracci Lodovico Painter 1555 1619
Ital. Agostino Painter 1558 1601
Ital. Annibale Painter 1560 1609
Landscape of, hi. 324, iv. 72 ; use of base models of portraiture
by, ii. 119.
Ital. Caravagerio, Amerigi 1569 1609
Ital. a Caravaggio, Polidoro 1495 1543
Vulgaiity of, hi. 263 ; perpetual seeking for horror and ugliness,
ii. 135 ; a worshipper of the depraved, iii. 34.
Carpaccio, Vittor about 1500
Delineation of architecture by, i. 105 ; luminous skies of, ii. 43 ;
painting of St. Mark's Church, i. 106.
Castagna, Andrea del 1409 1480
Rocks of, iii. 245.
Ital. Carpi, Ugo da, discoverer of the art of
printing in Chiaro-oscuro — with three
plates — to imitate drawings abozct 1700
Fr. Casas, Louis Francis Painter & Architect 1756 1827
Span. Castilio Y Saavedra, Anthony '..Painter 1603 1667
Cattermole, G
Foliage of, i. 401 ; Fall of the Clyde, i. 114 ; Glendearg, i. 114.
Ital. Cavendone, James
Ital. Cellini, Benvenuto, a Florentine
Flem. Champagne, Philip de
Gr. Chares
Eng. Cosway, Richard
Eng. Chantry, Sir Francis
Fr. Chaudet, Anthony Denis
Ital. Cimabue. Giovanni, a Florentine. . .
Ital. Claude Gele — called Claude Lorrain
Summary of his qualities, v. 258 ; painting of sunlieht by, iii.
325, v. 331 ; feeling of the beauty of form, i. 75, iii. 325, v. 258 ;
narrowness of, contrasted with vastness of nature, i. 76 ; aerial
effects of, iii. 326, v. 258 ; sincerity of purpose of, iii. 325. v. 258 ;
never forgot himself, i. 76, v. 258 ; true painting of afternoon
sunshine, iii. 329, v. 259, 331; effeminate softness of, v. 259;
landscape of, iii. 325, i. xxxviii. preface, v. 259 ; seas of, i. 76,
340, v. 258, 259 ; skies of, i. 205, 224 ; tenderness of perception
in, iii. 325 ; transition from Ghirlandajo to, iv. 1 ; absence of
imagination in, ii. 155 ; waterfalls of, i. 296; treatment of rocks
by, iv. 248, 302, iii. 329; tree drawing of, iii. 124, 341; absurdi-
ties of conception, iii. 328: deficiency in foreground, i. 176, 394;
distances of, i. 274 ; perspective of, i. 403. Pictures referred to —
Morning, in National Gallery (Cephalus and Procris), i. 313 ;
Enchanted Castle, i. 205 ; Campagna at Rome, i. xxxix. pre-
face ; 11 Mulino, i. xxxviii. preface, v. 250, ii. 146 ; Landscape,
No. 241, Dulwich Gallery, i. 205 ; Landscape, No. 244, Dulwich
Gallery, i. 280 ; Landscape, No. 260, Dulwich Gallery, i. 299 ;
Landscape in Uffizii Gallery, i. 335; Seaport, St. Ursula, No. 30,
National Gallery, i. 205 ; Queen of Sheba. No. 14, National Gal-
lery, i. 403;. Italian Seaport, No. 5, National Gallery, i. 227;
Seaport, No. 14, National Callery, i. 22; Marriage of Isaac and
Rebecca, i. 173, 191. 205, 274, 383; Moses at the Burning Bush,
iii. 328 ; Narcissus, i. 383 ; Pisa, i v. 1 ; St. George and the Dra-
gon, v. 261 ; Worship of the Golden Calf, v. 260 ; Sinon before
Priam, i. 165, 275; Liber Veritatis, No. 5, iv. 302 ; Liber V.,
No. 86, iv. 216; L. V.. No. 91. iv. 24S, SM9; L. V.. No. 140, iii.
121 ; L. V., No. 145. iii. 329; L. V., No. 180, iii. 328.
Gr. Cleomenes, an Athenian (The Medicean
Venus).. Sculptor f . B. C. 180
Amer. Clevenger Sculptor 1844
Amer. Cole, Thoma3 Land, tfc Hist. Painter. . . 1802 1848
1577
1606
Engraver &, Sculptor..
..1500
1570
1604
1674
Painter f. b.
c. 300
1740
1826
Sculptor
1781
1841
1763
1810
1240
1300
1600
1682
474
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
1776
1815
1534
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
Eng. Collins, William Land. & Fam. Life Pa . . 1788
Ital. Conegliano, Cima da Painter 15th cent.
Entire realization of foreground painting, iii. 182 ; painting in
church of the Madonna dell' Orto, i. 80.
Eng. Constable, John Painter 1776 1837
Landscape of, iii. 130 ; simplicity and earnestness of, i. 92 ; aspen
drawing of, iv. 75 ; Helmingham Park, Suffolk, iii. 123 ; Lock
on the Stour, iii. 122 ; foliage of, i. 400, iii. 123 ; landscape of,
iv. 36.
Eng. Cooper, Samuel Miniature Painter 1689
Amer. Copley, John Singleton (born in Boston). .Painter 1737
Ital. Correggio, Ant. (founder of the Lombard
school) Painter 1493
Choice of background, iii. 323; painting of flesh by, iii. 101 ;
leaf drawing of, v. 38 ; power of, to paint rain-clouds, v. 146
(note) ; love of physical beauty, iii. 34 ; morbid gradation, ii. 46 ;
morbid sentiment alism, ii. 170 ; mystery of, iv. 59 ; sensuality
of, ii. 124, 134; sidelong grace of, iii. 29; tenderness of, iii. 43.
Pictures referred to — Antiope, iii. 65, v. 39, 98, 140 ; Charioted
Diana, ii. 124 ; Madonna of the Incoronazione, ii. 124 ; St. Cath-
erine of the Giorno, ii. 124.
Ital. Cortona, Pietro da, a Tuscan Painter 1596 1669
Fr. Courtois, James (known as II Borgogn one) /YM«i!er 1621 1673
Fr. Couston, Nicholas (also his brother ^xa.). Sculptor 1658 1731
Cox, David 1783 1859
Drawings of, i. xlii. preface, i. 95 ; foliage of, i. 400 ; rain-clouds
of. i. 245 ; skies of, in water-colour, i. 253 ; sunset on distant
hills, i. 97.
Amer. Crawford, Thomas Sculptor 1813 1857
Creswick, Thomas Painter 1811 1869
Tree-painting of, i. 392. Pictures referred to — Nut-brown Maid,
i. 392 ; Weald of Kent, i. 401.
Cruikshank, G-
iv. 379 ; Noah Claypole (" Oliver Twist"), v. 281.
Dutch. Cuyp, Jacob G Landscape & Cattle Pa. .1568 1649
Dutch. Cuyp, Albert (son of above) Landscape & Cattle Pa.. 1606 1667
Dutch. Cuyp, Benjamin Historical Painter 1650
Principal master of pastoral landscape, v. 206 ; tone of, i. 148 ;
no sense of beauty, i. 75; sky of. i. 211, 222, 206; cattle painting
of, v. 274; sunlight of, v. 269, 331 ; water of, i. 342; foliage of,
v. 38, 40 ; and Rubens, v. 264-275. Pictures referred to — Hilly
Landscape in Dulwich Gallery, No. 169, i. 148, 206 ; Landscape,
in National Gallery, No. 53, i. 148, v. 41 ; Waterloo etchings, i.
90 ; Landscape, Dulwich Gallery, No. 83, i. 336, No. 163, v. 40.
Eng. Daniel, Thomas Landscape Painter 1840
Ger. Dannecker, John Henry — (Ariadne, Szc). Sculptor 175S 1834
Ariadne, iii. 77.
Fr. David, James Louis, a celebrated Painter 1750 1825
Fr. David (founder of recent French school) . . Sculptor 1780
Fr. Delaroche, Paul Historical Painter.
Ger. Denner, Balthaser Portrait Painter 1685 1747
Dighton, W. E
Hayfield in a Shower, ii. 224 ; Haymeadow Corner, ii. 224.
G-r. Dinocrates, a Macedonian (builder of Alex-
andria, &c.) Architect f. b. c. 330
Ital. Dolci, Carlo • Scripture Painter 1616 1686
Finish for finish's sake, iii. 117 ; softness and smoothness, iii.
117 ; St. Peter, ii. 200.
Ital. Domenichino (excelled in expression) Painter 1581 1641
Angels of, ii. 216; landscape of, iii. 325; Madonna del Rosario,
and Martyrdom of St. Agr.es, both utterly hateful, i. 87, ii. 216.
Ital. Donatello, or Donato. a Florentine Sculptor 1383 1466
Dutch. Douw, Gerard '. Familiar Life Painter . . . 1613 1674
y Drummond
A, Banditti on the Watch, ii. 224.
J>(Fr. Dubuffe Historical Painter.
Fr. Dufresnoy, Charles Alphonso Painter.
Amor. Dunlap, William Historical Painter 1766
Ger. Durer, Albert (and author) Pa., Eng., Sc., db Arch.. 1471 1528
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 475
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
And Salvator, v. 244-254 ; deficiency in perception of the beau-
tiful, iv. 320 ; education of, v. 240-249 ; mind of, how shown, v.
29'J ; decision of, iv. 76, ii. 221 ; tree-drawing, v. 71 ; finish of,
iii. 43, 128 ; gloomily minute, i. 88 ; hatred of fog, iv. 53 ; draw-
ing of crests, iv. 211 ; love of sea, v. 248. Pictures referred to —
Dragon of the Apocalypse, iv. 211 ; Fall of Lucifer, iv. 197 ; The
Cannon, v. 248 ; Knight and Death, iii. 97, 102, v. 249, 252 ;
Melancholia, iv. 45, iii. 100, v. 252, 253 ; Root of Apple-tree in
Adam and Eve, iii. 120, v. 71 ; St. Hubert, v. 104, 248 ; St. Je-
rome, v. 248.
Ger. Eberhardt Sculptor.
Eng. Eginton, Francis (restorer of the art of
painting on glass) Painter 1737 1805
Eng. Etty, William Historical Painter 1787 1849
Richness and play of colour of, ii. 199 ; Morning Prayer, ii. 223 ;
Still Life, ii. 223 ; St. John, ii. 223.
Gr. Eupompus (founder of school at Sicyon) . . Painter.
Dutch. Eyck, John Van (said to have invented
painting in oil) Painter 1370 1441
Deficiency in perception of the beautiful, iv. 326.
Fielding, Copley 1787 1855
Faithful rendering of nature, i. 96 ; feeling in the drawing of
inferior mountains, i. 303 ; foliage of, i. 401 ; water of, i. 343 ;
moorland foreground, i. 185 ; use of crude colour, i. 96 ; love of
mist, iv. 72 ; rainclouds of, i. 245 ; sea of, i. 346 ; truth of, i.
245. Picture referred to — Bolton Abbey, i. 98.
Eng. Flaxman, John Sculptor 1755 1826
Alpine stones, iv. 302 ; Pool of Envy (in his Dante), iv. 301.
Francia, Francesco 1450 1518
Architecture of the Renaissance style, i. 101 ; finish of, iii. 126;
treatment of the open sky, ii. 42 ; Madonnas of, ii. 219 ; Nativ-
ity, iii. 49.
Swiss. Fuseli, Henry (resided in England) Painter 1741 1825
Gaddi, Taddeo 1300 1352
Treatment of the open sky, ii. 42.
X Eng. Gainsborough, Thomas Landscape Painter 1727 178S
Colour of, i. 91 ; execution of, i. xx. preface ; aerial distances of,
i. 91 ; imperfect treatment of details, i. 81.
Ital. Ghiberti, Laurence, a Florentine Sculptor 1378 1455
Leaf moulding and bas-reliefs of, v. 38.
Eng. Gibson • Sculptor.
Ital. Giordani, Luke (The Proteus of painting). Pa inter 1629 1704
Ghirlandajo 1449 1498
Architecture of the Renaissance style, i. 101 ; introduction of
portraiture in pictures, ii. 119; reality of conception, iii. 59;
rocks of, iii. 245, 321 ; symmetrical arrangement of pictures, ii.
73 ; treatment of the open sky, ii, 42 ; quaintness of landscape,
iii. 329 ; garlanded backgrounds of, v. 97. Pictures referred to,—
Adoration of the Magi, iii. 319 ; Baptism of Christ, iii. 321 ;
Pisa, iv. 1.
Ital. Giorgione, Barbarelli Painter 1477 1511
Boyhood of. v. 801-309; perfect intellect of, v. 300: landscape
of. i. 85 ; luminous sky of, ii. 42 ; modesty of, ii. 122, 123 ; one
of the few who has painted leaves, v. 38 ; frescoes of, v. 299,
354 ; sacrifice of form to colour by, ii. 198 ; two figures, or the
Fondaco do' Tedeschi, i. 108 ; one of the seven supreme colour-
ists, v. 335 (note).
Ital. Giotto (one of the earliest modern) Painter, Sculp, &, Arch. .1276 1336
Cramped by traditional treatment, ii. 175 ; decoration of, ii. 214;
influence of hills- upon, iv. 860 ; introduction of portraiture in
pictures, ii. 1*19; landscape Of, ii. 212; power in detail, iii. 59;
reality of conception, iii. 59; symmetrical arrangement in pic-
tures, ii. 72 ; treatment of the open sky, ii. 42 ; unison of ex-
pressional and pictorial power in detail, iii. 80 ; use of mountain
distances, iv. 347. Pictures referred to — Baptism of Christ, ii.
172; Charity, iii. 101 ; Crucifixion and Arena frescoes, ii. 127;
Sacrifice for the Fri«des, i. 86.
476
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NAME AND PROFESSION.
BORN.
Fr.
Fr.
Fr.
Ital.
Amer.
Ital.
Ital.
Giraldon, Francis Sculptor : 1630
Girodet — Trioson, Aime Louis Painter. 1767
Gougon, John ("The French Phidias"). .Sculptor.
Gozzoli, Benozzo 1408
Landscape of, ii. .212; love of simple domestic incident, iii. 29;
reality of conception, iii. 59 ; treatment of the open sky, ii. 42.
Greenough, Horatio Sculptor 1805
Guercino (real name Francis Barbieri).. . . Painter. 1590
Hagar, ii. 128.
Guido Beni (excelled in beauty of expres-
sion and grace) Painter 1574
Sensuality, ii. 124, 134 ; use of base models for portraiture, ii.
119. Picture — Susannah and the Elders, ii. 124.
DIED.
1715
1824
1572
1478
1852
1606
1642
Harding, J. D 1798
Aspen, drawing of, iv. 75 ; execution of, i. 176, 397, iv. 75 ;
chiaroscuro of, i. 176. 400 ; distance of, i. 186 ; foliage, i. 382,
397 ; trees of, v. 66 (note), i. 382 ; rocks of, i. 309 ; water of, i.
345. Pictures referred to — Chamonni, i. 282 ; Sunrise on the
Swiss Alps, i. 99.
Eng. Harlow, George Henry Painter 1787
Eng. Haydon, B. B Historical Painter 1786
Eng. Heath, Charles Engraver
Flem. Hemling 1450
Finish of, iii. 126.
Eng. Hilton. William Historical Painter 1786
Flem. Hobbema, Mynderhout Landscape Painter 1611
Niggling of, v. 39, 40 ; distances of, i. 199 ; failures of, i. 195,
393 ; landscape in Dulwich Gallery, v. 39.
Eng. Hogarth, William Painter. 1697
Swiss. Holbein, Hans Portrait & Historical Pa. ,1498
Best northern art represented by, v. 221, 245 ; the most accu-
rate portrait painter, v. 338 ; Dance of Death, iii. 97 ; glorious
severity of, ii. 122 ; cared not for flowers, v. 97.
Ger. Hollar, Wenceslaus (executed 2400 plates). Engraver 1607
Dutch. Hooghe, De Painter 1643
Quiet painting of, v. 297.
Flem. Honthorst, Gerard (called Gherarda dal
Notte) Painter 1592
Dutch. Houbraken, Jacob (600 portraits) Engraver 1698
Fr. Houdon (executed statue of Franklin). . . Sculptor 1746
Fr. Houel, John (Picturesque Travels, &c.) . .Painter & Engraver 1736
Hunt, Holman Painter
Finish of, i. 410 (note). Pictures referred to — Awakened Con-
science, iii. 93: Claudio and Isabella, iii. 28; Light of the
World, iii. 30, 41, 59, 78, 340, iv. 58 (note) ; Christ in the Tem-
ple, v. 364.
Hunt, William 1790
Anecdote of, iii. 90 ; Farmer's Girl, iii. 85 ; foliage of, i. 401 ;
great ideality in treatment of still life, ii. 199.
Dutch. Huysum, John Van (flowers and fruit) Painter 1682
Amer. Inman, Henry Portrait & Landsc. Pa. .1801
Eng.
Flem.
Ital.
Swiss.
Ger.
Jones, Inigo Architect. .
Jordaens, Jacob Painter. . .
Julio, Romano Painter &
..1572
1595
rchitect 1492
1863
1819
1846
1849
Kauffman, M. A. Angelica C. (in Eng-
land) Poetical Painter 1747
Kneller, Sir Godfrey (resided in Eng\and)Painler 1648
1839
1699
1764
1564
1677
1708
1660
1780
1828
1813
1864
1749
1846
1652
1670
1546
1807
1723
Eng. Landseer, Edwin Animal & Historical Pa . 1873
More a natural historian than a painter, ii. 198 (note) ; animal
painting of, v. 272 ; Dog of, ii. 198 ; Old Cover Hack, deficiency
of colour, ii. 222 : Itandom Shot, ii. 222 ; Shepherd's Chief
Mourner, i. 9, 30 : Ladies' Pets, imperfect grass drawing, v.
105 ; Low Life, v. 281.
Dutch. Lairesse, Gerard (excelled in expedition).. Painter & Engraver 1640 1711
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NATION,
Fr.
Fr.
Ger.
Fr.
Eng.
Amer.
Fr.
Ital.
Eng.
Gr.
Amer.
Ital.
Flem.
Ger.
Ital.
Ger.
Fr.
Swiss.
Eng.
Span.
Eng.
Eng.
Eng.
Eng.
Dutch.
Dutch.
Eng.
NAME AND PROFESSION.
Landon, C. P. (more eminent as an author
of works on the fine arts) Painter.
Laurati
.1-282
ii. 12.
. Portrait & Hist. Painter. 1769
1019
1(348
1617
1794
1810
1494
1400
1803
324
Treatment of the ope
Lawrence, Sir Thomas. . .
Satan of, ii. 204.
Lewis, John
Climax of water-colour drawing, i. 35 ; success in seizing Span-
ish character, i. 121.
Lebrun, Charles (painter to Louis XIY.). .Painter
Lely, Sir Peter (painter to Charles II. of
England) Painter
Le Sieur, Eustace (the French Raphael) . . Painter
Leslie, C. R Painter
Leutze, Emmanuel
Leyden, Lucas, Dammesz Painter & Engraver
Linnell
Cumuli of, i. 141 (note). Picture referred to — Eve of the Del-
uge, ii. 221.
Lippi. Filippino
Heads of,"ii. 215 ; Tribute Money, iii. 322.
Liverseege, Henr y Painter
Lysippus (made 600 statues) Sculptor f. b. c.
Malbone, Edward G Miniature Painter 1777
Mantegna, Andrea - Painter 1431
Pamting of stones by, iv. 296 ; decoration of, ii. 215.
Masaccio Painter 1402
Painting of vital truth from vital present, iii. 94: introduction
of portraiture into pictures, ii. 119 ; mountain scenery of. i. 93,
iv. 293 : Deliverance of Peter, ii. 217 ; Tribute Money, i. 83, 93,
iii. 322.'
Matsys, Quintin Painter 1460
Mayer Sculptor.
Mazzuolo. Francis (inventor of etching). . .Painter 1503
Memmi, Simone 1285
Abstract of the Duomo at Florence, at Santa Maria Novella, i.
101 : introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119.
Mengs, Anthony R. (the Raphael of Ger-
many) Painter 1729
Mumard, Peter Painter 1610
Millais
Huguenot, iii. 93.
Mind, Gottfried Painter 1768
Mino da Fiesole
Trutn and tenderness of, ii. 181 ; two statues by. ii. 197.
Moreland. George Painter • 1764
Mulready 1796
Pictures by— The Butt, perfect colour, ii. 221 ; Burchell and So-
phia, ii. 221 ; Choosing of the Wedding Gown, ii. 221 : Gravel
Pit, ii. 222.
Murillo, Bartholomew S Painter 1613
Painting of, ii. 82.
.Historical Painter 1785
Lr.
Newton, Gilbert Stuart ,
Nesfield
Treatment of water by, i. 344.
Nollekins, Joseph Sculptor 1737
Northcote, James Painter 1746
Opie, John Painter 1761
Orcagna lS&ti
Influence of hills upon, iv. 350 ; intense solemnity and energy of.
iii. 29: unison of expresaional and pictorial power in detail of,
iii. 30: Inferao, ii. 127: Last Judgment, ii. 178, iii. 58: Ma-
donna, ii. 197; Triumph of Death, iii. 59, 100.
Ostade, Adrian Van (interiors) Familiar Life. Painter. . .1610
Otitade; Isaac (winter scenes) Painter 1617
Owen, William Painter. ................ 1769
1730
Pajou, Augustin Sculptc
478
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN.
Ital. Palladio, Andrew Architect 1518
Span. Palomino de Castro Y Velasco, A. A Painter. . . : .1653
Gr. Parrhasius, of Ephesus. Painter f. B. c. 420
Amer. Peale, Charles W Histor. & Portrait Pa. . . 1741
Fr. Perrault, Claudius (designed the Front of
the Louvre) Architect 1613
Ital. Perugino, Peter (the master of Baphael) . . Painter 1446
Decoration of, ii. 214 ; finish of, ii. 82 ; formalities of, iii. 128,
322 ; hatred of fog, iv. 53 ; landscape of, ii. 212 ; mountain dis-
tances of, iv. 348 ; right use of gold by, i. 1U6 ; rationalism of,
how affecting his works, v. 217 ; sea of, i. 342 ; expression of,
inspiration by, ii. 218. Pictures referred to — Annunciation, ii.
43 ; Assumption of the Virgin, ii. 43 : Michael the Archangel, ii.
218 ; Nativity, iii. 49 ; Portrait of Himself, ii. 134 ; Queen- Vir-
gin, iii. 52 ; St. Maddelena at Florence, i. 342.
Petitot, John (excelled in enamel) Painter .1607
Phidias (the most famous of ancient sculp-
tors) Sculptor b. c. 498:
Picart, Bernard Engraver 1663
Pickersgill ^
Contest of Beauty, ii. 223.
Pigalle, John Baptiste Sculptor 1714
Piles, Boger de (an author and painter). .Painter 1635
Pinturicchio i 1454
Finish of, ii. 82 : Madonnas of, ii. 219.
Piranesi, John Baptiste (16 vols, folio) Engraver 1707
Pisellino, Filippo
Bocks of, iii. 245.
Polycletus (statue of Juno at Argos) Sculptor B. c. 430
Pordencne, Begillo da Painter 1584
Potter. Paul (unequalled in animal paint-
ing) Painter 1625
Landscape, in Grosvenor Gallery, ii. 220 ; Landscape, No. 176,
Dulwich Gallery, i. 3S6 : foliage of, compared with Hobbima*s
and BuysdaeFs, v. 38 ; best Dutch painter of cattle, 269.
Poussin, Gaspar (Dughet) landscape Painter 1613
Foliage of, i. 381-390; distance of, i. 199: narrowness of, con-
trasted with vastness of nature, i. 176; mannerism of, i. 88.. ii.
44, iv. 36 : perception of moral truth, i. 75 : skies of, i. 224, 227 ;
want of imagination, ii. 155 ; false sublimity, iv. 240. Pictures
referred to — Chimborazo, i. 205 ; Destruction of Niobe's Chil-
dren, in Dulwich Gallerv, i. 290 : Dido and ^Eneas, i. 254, 386,
ii. 156 ; La Biccia. i. 381, 152, ii. 156 ; Mont Blanc, i. 205 ; Sac-
rifice of Isaac, i. 192, 205, 227. ii. 156.
Fr. Poussin. Nicholas (excelled in landscape
painting) Painter 1594
And Claude, v. 255-262 ; principal master of classical landscape,
v. 206, 261 ; peculiarities of, v. 262 ; compared with Claude and
Titian, v. 262 ; characteristics of works by, v. 262 ; want of sen-
sibility in, v. 262 ; landscape of, v. 262-263 : trees of, i. 395 ;
landscape of, composed on right principles, i. 88, iii. 330, ii. 156.
Pictures referred to — The Plague, v. 262 : Death of Polydectes,
v. 262 : Triumph of David, v. 262 ; The Deluge, v. 262 ; Apollo,
ii. 202 ; Deluge (Louvre), i. 341, iv. 239 ; Landscape, No. 260,
Dulwich Gallery, i. 142: Landscape, No'. 212, Dulwich Gallery,
i. 227 ; Phocion, i. 142, 155, 173, 254 ; Triumph of Flora, iii. 330.
Amer. Powers, Hiram Sculptor 1805
Gr. Praxiteles Sculptor f. B. c. 350
Amer. Pratt, Matthew Painter 1734
Procaccini, Camillo Painter 1546
Picture referred to— Martyrdom (Milan), ii. 12S.
\ Prout, Samuel Painter 1786
Master of noble picturesque, iv. 14 ; influence on modern art by
works of, i. 100 : excellent composition and colour of, i. 110, 112;
expression of the crumbling character of stone, i. 94, 110, 112.
Pictures referred to— Brussels, ,i. Ill ; Cologne, i. Ill : Flemish
Hotel de Ville, i. 113: Gothic Well at Batisbon. i. Ill : Italy
and Switzerland, i. Ill ; Louvain, i. Ill ; Nuremberg, i. Ill ;
Sion, i. Ill ; Sketches in Flanders and Germany, i. Ill ; Spire
of Calais, iv. 14 ; Tours, i. 111.
DIED.
1580
1720
1827
16S8
1524
Swiss.
Gr.
Fr.
Fr.
Fr.
Ital.
Gr.
Ital.
Dutch.
Ital.
1631
c. 431
1733
1785
1709
1513
177i
1654
1675
1872
1S05
1626
1852
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 479
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
Fr. Prudhon, of Cluny rainier 1760 1823
Fr. Paget, Peter Sculp., Pa. dk Arch 1622 1094
Punch
Instance of modern grotesque from, iv. 379.
Pyne, J. B .
Drawing of, i. 310.
Gr. Pythagoras Sculptor.
Ital. Raphael (real name Sanzio), a pre-emi-
nent Painter 1483 1520
Chiaroscuro of, iv. 44: completion of detail by, i. 81, ih. 119;
finish of, ii. 82 ; instances of leaf drawing by, v. #8 ; convention-
alism of branches by, v. 41 : his hatred of fog, hi. 126, iv. 53 ;
influence of hills upon. iv. 349 ; influenced by Masaccio, hi. 322 ;
introduction of portraiture in pictures by, ii. 119 ; composition
of, v. 193 : lofty disdain of colour in drawings of. v. 337 (note) ;
landscape of, ii. 212 : mountain distance of. iv. 347 : subtle gra-
dation of sky, ii. 45-48 ; symbolism of. iii. 100. Pictures referred
to — Baldacehino, ii. 43 ; Charge to Peter, iii. 54, 322 : Draught
of Fishes, i. preface, xxviii.. ii. 199 : Holy Family — Tribune of
the Uffizii. iii. 320 : Madonna della Sediola, ii. 43. iii. 52 : Ma-
donna dell' Impannata, ii. 43 ; Madonna del Cardcllino. ii. 43 ;
Madonna di San Sisto, iii. 5S ; Massacre of the Innocents, ii.
128, 176 ; Michael the Archangel, ii. 11S : Moses at the Burning
Bush. ii. 122 ; Nativity, iii. 347 : St. Catherine, i. preface, xxx.,
i. 34,' 136. ii. 97, 218 ; St. Cecilia, ii. 134, 213, iii. 16, 56 ; St.
John of the Tribune, ii. 43 ; School of Athens, ih. 28 ; Trans-
figuration, iii. 56 (note).
Ital. Rembrandt, Paul Painter 1606 1674
Landscape cf, i. 189 ; chiaroscuro of. iii. 36, iv. 3S-45 ; etchings
of , i. 399 ( note) ; vulgarity of, iii. 263. Pictures referred to —
Presentation of Christ in the Temple, ii. 41 ; Spotted Shell, ii.
199 : Painting of himself and his wife, v. 267.
Rethel, A
Pictures referred to — Death the Avenger, hi. 102 ; Death the
Friend, ih. 102.
V Retsch Painter 1779 1859
Pictures referred to — Illustrations to Schiller's Fight of the
Dragon, ii. 167.
Eng. Reynolds, Sir Joshua Painter 1723 1792
Swiftest of painters, v. 203 ; influence of early life of, on paint-
ing of, v. 304 ; lectures quoted, i. 7, 44, iii. 4 : tenderness of, iv.
63 (note). Picture referred to — Charitv, iii. 101.
W Roberts, David . 1796 1864
Architectural drawing of, i. 115 ; drawings of the Holy Land. i.
116; hieroglyphics of the Egyptian temples, i. 117; Roslin
Chapel, i. 117.
Robson, G 1776 1&33
Mountain scenery of, i. 94, iii. 332.
Fr. Roland, Philip L. (Homer in the Louvre) .Sculptor 1746 1816
Eng. Romney, George Painter 1734 1802
Ital. Rosa, Salvator (scenes of gloom) Painter 1614 1673
And Albert Durer, v. 244-254 ; landscape of, i. 385 ; characteris-
tics of, v. 250, 299 ; how influenced by Calabrian scenery, v. 250 ;
of what capable, v. 250 ; death, how regarded by, v. 251 ; con-
trast between, and Angelico, v. 299; leaf branches of, com-
pared with Durcr's, v. 72, 73: example of tree bough of, v. 49;
education of, v. 249, 250 ; fallacies of contrast with early artic-ts,
v. 52 : narrowness of, contrasted with freedom and vastness of
nature, i. 70 ; perpetual seeking for horror and ugliness, ii. 12(5,
135, v. 50-71 ; skies of, i. 224, 227 : vicious execution of, i. 39, ii.
82; vigorous imagination of, ii. 156; vulgarity of, iii. 34, iii.
325, 263. Pictures referred to — Apollo and Sibyl, v. 75 : L'mnna
Fragilita, v. 251 : Baptism of Christ, ii. 172 (note): Battles by,
ii. 124; Diogenes, ii, 150: Finding of OEdipns, iii. 119, v. 70;
Landscape, No. 220, Dulwioh C illery, i. 228, 237, 289, 307;
Landscape, No. 159. Dulwich Gallery, i. 251: Sea-piece (Pitti
Palace), i. 340; Peace burning the arms of War, i. 385; St.
Jerome, ii. 150 ; Temptation of St. Anthony, ii. 44 (note); Mer-
cury and the Woodman (National Gallery), i. 154.
480
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
Eng. Rowlandson, Th. (caricature — Dr. Syntax,
&c. ) Painter dk- Engraver 1756 1827
Flem. Rubens, Peter Paul, a celebrated Painter. . .'. 1577 164U
And Cuyp, v. 264-275 ; colour of, i. 166 ; landscape of, i. 89, 217,
iii. 187, 325 ; leaf drawing of, v. 38 : flowers of, v. 97 ; realistic
temper of, iii. 101 ; symbolism of, iii. 100 ; treatment of light, ii.
40, i. 162 ; want of feeling for grace and mystery, iv. 14 ; cha-
racteristics of, v. 266 ; religion of, v. 267 ; delight in martyr-
doms, v. 206 ; painting of dogs and horses by, v. 272, 273 : de-
scriptions of his own pictures by, v. 267 ; imitation of sunlight
by, v. 331 (note) ; hunts by, v. 272. Pictures referred to— Ado-
ration of the Magi, i. 37 ; Battle of the Amazons, v. 266 ; Land-
scape, No. 175, Dulwich Gallery, iv. 15 : His Family, v. 267 ;
Waggoner, iii. 118 ; Landscapes in Pitti Palace, i. 89 ; Sunset
behind a Tournament, iii. 325.
Runciman, Alexander Painter 1736 1785
Ruysdael, Jacob Landscape Painter 1636 1684
Pictures referred to — Punning and Falling Water, i. 321, 340 ;
Sea-piece, i. 340.
Ruysdael, Solomon Pointer 1616 1670
Rysbrach, John Michael (works in West-
minster Abbey) Sculptor 1694 1770
Sanmicheli, Michael Architect 1434 1559
Sarto, Andrea del, see Vanucchi.
Scamozzi, Vincent Architect 1550 1616
Schadow, Rudolf Sculptor 1786 1822
Schalken, Godfrey (candlelight scenes). ..Painter 1643 1706
Sehongauer, Martin : 1420 I486
Joy in ugliness, iv. 323 ; missal drawing of, iv. 323.
Scopas Sculptor B.C. 460 B. c. 353
Sharp, William Engraver 1740 1824
Sherwin, John Keyse Engraver 1790
Smybert, John Painter. 1728 1751
Snyders, Francis (landscape and animal).. Painter 1579 1657
Painting of dogs by, v. 272.
Soufflot, J. G. (church of St. Genevieve at
Paris). . , Architect 1714 1 781
Spaendonck, Gerradvan (flower) Painter 1746 1S22
Spagnoletto 1589 1615
Vicious execution of, ii. 82.
Stanfield, Clarkson 1793 1867
Architectural drawing of, i. 118 ; boats of, i. 119 ; chiaroscuro
of, i. 277 ; clouds of, i. 221, 239 ; a realistic painter, i. 118, iv. 57
(note) ; knowledge and power of, i. 348. Pictures referred to —
Amain, ii. 222 : Borromean Islands, with St. Gothard in the dis-
tance, i. 278 ; Botallack Mine (coast scenery), i. 309 ; Brittany,
near Dol, iv. 7 ; Castle of Ischia, i. 119 ; Doge's Palace at Ven-
ice, i. 120 ; East Cliff, Hastings, i. 308 : Magra, ii. 223 ; Rocks
of Suli, i. 302 ; Wreck on the Coast of Holland, i. 119.
Strange, Robert Engraver 1721 1792
Strutt, Joseph (an author and painter) Painter 1749 1802
Stuart. James (author of the "Antiquities
of Athens ») Architect 1713 1788
Stuart, Gilbert (pupil of Benjamin West). Portrait Painter 1756 1828
Sully, Thomas Painter 1783
Taylor, Frederick
Drawings of, power of .^wift execution, i. 35, 253.
Teniers, David, the elder (pupil of Rubens) PaiJiter 1582 1649
Teniers. David, the younger (pupil of Ru-
bens) Painter 1610 1694
Scenery of, v. 268 ; painter of low subjects, v. 272. Pictures re-
ferred to — Landscape, No. 139, Dulwich Gallery, i. 311.
Thorwaldsen Sculptor 1772 1844
Timanthes (contemporary with Parrha-
sius) Painter f . b. c. 420
Tintoretto (a Venetian — pupil of Titian). .Painter 1512 1594
Colouring of, iii. 43 ; Delicacy of, iii. 39 ; painting of vital truth
from the vital present, iii. 93 ; use of concentrically-grouped
Scotch.
Dutch.
Dutch.
Eng.
Ital.
Ital.
Ital.
Ger.
Dutch.
Gr.
Eng.
Eng.
Amer.
Flem.
Fr.
Dutch.
Scotch,
Eng.
Eng.
Amer.
Amer.
Flem.
Flem.
Dan.
Gr.
Ital.
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 481
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BOEN. DIED.
leaves by, ii. 72 ; imagination, ii. 155, 15(5, 170, 17G ; inadequacy
• of landscapes by, i. 77; influence of hills upon, iv. 250 ; inten-
sity of imagination of, ii. 170, iv. 63 ; introduction of portrait-
ure in pictures, ii. 11!); luminous sky of, ii. 42; modesty of, ii.
122 ; neglectful of flower-beauty, v. 97 ; mystery about tlie pen-
cilling of, ii. 65 ; no sympathy with the humour of the world, iv.
13 ; painter of space, i. 85 ; realistic temper of, iii. 101 ; sacrifice
of form to colour by, ii. 197 ; Brightness and earnest haste of, ii.
81 (note) ; 183 (note) ; symbolism of, iii. 100. Pictures referred
to — Agony in the Garden, ii. 156 ; Adoration of the Magi, iii. 81,
126, iv. 68 ; Annunciation, ii. 161 : Baptism, ii. 200 ; Cain and
Abel, i. 393 (note) ;■ Crucifixion, ii. 174, 180, iii. 72 ; v. 209, 235 ;
Doge Loredano before the Madonna, ii. 200 ; Entombment, ii.
170, iii. 324 ; Pall of Adam, i. 79 (note) ; Flight into Egypt, ii.
156, 202 ; Golden Calf, ii. 200 ; Last Judgment, ii. 178 ; picture
in Church of Madonna dell' Orto, i. 106 ; Massacre of the Inno-
cents, ii. 129, 170, 180 ; Murder of Abel, i. 386 ; Paradise, i. 334,
iv. 62, v. 235, 242 ; Plague of Piery Serpents, ii. 180 ; St. Prancis,
ii. 203 ; Temptation, ii. 156, 184.
Ital. Titian (the greatest painter of Venetian
school) Painter 1480 1579
Tone of, i. 146 ; tree drawing of, i. 387 ; want of foreshortening,
v. 77 ; bough drawing of, i. 387 ; good leaf drawing, v. 39 ; dis-
tant branches of, v. 41 ; drawing of crests by, iv. 214 ; colour in
the shadows of, iv. 45 ; mind of, v. 240, 241 ; imagination of, ii.
156 ; master of heroic landscape, v. 206 ; landscape of, i. 77, iii.
323 ; influence of hills upon, iv. 350 ; introduction of portraiture
in pictures, ii. 119 ; home of, v. 301, 302 ; modesty of, ii. 122 ;
mystery about the pencilling of, iv. 59 ; partial want of sense of
beauty of, ii. 134 ; prefers jewels and fans to flowers, v. 97 ;
right conception of the human form, ii. 122, v. 241 ; sacrifice of
form to colour by, ii. 198 ; colour of, v. 331, 334; stones of, iv.
298, 299 ; trees of, i. 387, ii. 72. Pictures referred to — Assump-
tion, iv. 197 (note), v. 235, 242, 266, 329 ; Bacchus and Ariadne,
i. 33, 146, iii. 127, v. 97 ; Death of Abel, i. 79 (note) ; Entomb-
ment, iii. 126 ; Europa (Dulvvich Gallery), i. 146 ; Faith, i. 107 ;
Holy Family, v. 199 (note) ; Madonna and Child, v. 181 ; Madon-
na with St. Peter and St. George, v. 181 ; Flagellation, ii. 43 ;
Magdalen (Pitti Palace), ii. 123, v. 240, 354 (note) ; Marriage of
St. Catherine, i. 89 ; Portrait of Lavinia, v. 97 ; preface viii. ;
Older Lavinia, preface viii. ; St. Francis receiving the Stigmata,
i. 211 (note); St. Jerome, i. 85, ii. 156; St. John, ii. 119; San
Pietro Martire, ii. 156, 202 ; Supper at Emmans, iii. 20, 126 ;
Venus, iii. 65 ; Notomie, v. 354.
Amer. Trumbull, John Historical Painter 1756 1843
Turner, William, of Oxford
Mountain drawings, i. 301.
Eng. Turner, Joseph Mallord William 1775 1851
Character of, v. 358-359, (note) 365 ; affection of, for humble
scenery, iv. 243, 244 ; architectural drawing of, i. 107, 196 ; his
notion of "Eris" or "Discord," v. 323, 324; admiration of, for
Vandevelde, i. 324 ; boyhood of, v. 303-313 ; chiaroscuro of, i.
132, 141, 146, 278, 358, iv. 38-50 ; only painter of sun-colour, v.
331 ; painter of " the Rose and the Cankervvorm," v. 340 ; his
subjection of colour to chiaroscuro, i. 108 ; colour of, i. 132, 149,
154, 157, 168, 166-168, ii. 198, iii. 242 (note), iv. 38 ; v. 335 (note) ;
composition of, iv. 26, 302 ; curvature of, i. 123. 395, iii. 123 ; iv.
188, 280 ; tree drawing of, i. 388, v. 41, 70, 74, 77 ; drawing of
banks by, iv. 287, 289 ; discovery of scarlet shadow by, v. 331,
333, 334 ; drawing of cliffs by, iv. 241 ; drawing of
crests by, iv. 216, 218, 223 ; drawing of figures by, i.
186; drawing of reflections by, i. 149, 354, 350, 373, 374;
drawing of leaves by, v. 41, 100 ; drawing of water by, i. 350,
3T6; exceeding refinement of truth in, i. 405; education of,
iii. 316, v. 315 (note) ; execution of, v. 41 ; ruin of his pictures
by decay of pigments, i. 133 (note) ; gradation of, i. 256 ; supe-
riority of intellect in, i. 29 ; expression of weight in water by, i.
362, 871 ; expression of infinite redundance by, iv. 285; aspects,
iii. 285, 313 ; first great landscape painter, iii. 285, v. 342 ; form
sacrificed to colour, ii. 198; head of Pre-liaphaelitism, iv. 58;
21
482 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED,
master of contemplative landscape, v. 207 ; work of, in first
period, v. 314 ; infinity of, i. 236, 278 ; ii. 23?, 288, 294 ; influ-
ence of Yorkshire scenery upon, i. 123, iv. 241, 291, 296, 302 ; his'
love of stones and rocks, iii. 321, iv. 22 ; love of rounded hills,
iv. 241 ; master of the science of aspects, iii. 313 ; mystery of,
i. 195, 254, 407, iv. 32, 58, v. 41 ; painting of French and Swiss
landscape by, i. 127 ; spirit of pines not entered into by, v. 86,
87 ; flowers not often painted by, v. 99 ; painting of distant ex-
panses of water bv, i. 360 ; rendering of Italian character by, i.
127 ; skies of, .i. 135, 198, 232, 263 ; storm-clouds, how regarded
by, v. 152 ; study of clouds by, i. 218, 232, 238, 246-257, v. 127 ;
study of old masters by, iii. 330; sketches of, v. 195, 196, 350,
£50 (note), v. preface, v. ATi. ; system of tone of, i. 141, 150, 358 ;
treatment of foregrounds by, i. 314, v. 105 ; treatment of pictur-
esque by, iv. 6-14 ; treatment of snow mountains by, iv. 236 ;
memoranda of, v. 197, 198, 351 (note) ; topography of, iv. 15-32 ;
unity of, i. 316 ; views of Italy by, i. 129 ; memory of, iv. 26,
29 ; ideal conception of, i. 377 ; endurance of ugliness by, v. 303,
304 ; inventive imagination of, dependent on mental vision and
truth of impression, iv. 20-23, 302; lessons to be learnt from
Liber Studiorum, v. 349, 350 ; life of, v. 357 ; death of, v. 367.
Pictures referred to — iEsaeus and Hesperie, i. 389 ; Acro-Cor-
inth, i. 218 ; Alnwick, i. 124, 265 ; Ancient Italy, i. 128 ; Apollo
and Sibyl, v. 348 ; Arona with St. Gothard, i. 278 ; Assos, i. 198
(note); Avenue of Brienne, i. 175; Babylon, i. 232; Bam-
borough, i. 369 ; Bay of Bala?, i. 129, 319, iii. 318, v. 1C6, 339 ;
Bedford, i. 124 ; Ben Lomond, i. 254 ; Bethlehem, i. 239 ; Bin-
gen, i. 264; Blenheim, i. 264; Bolton Abbey, i. 389, iii. 122, iv.
244 ; Bonneville in Savoy, i. 130 ; Boy of Egremont, i. 367 ;
Buckfastleigh, i. 263, iv. 15 ; Building of Carthage, i. 29, 133, 145,
159, 167, iii. 318 ; Burning of Parliament House, i. 265 ; Caer-
laverock, i. 198 (note), 260 ; Calais, i. 265 ; Calder Bridge, i. 130 ;
Caldron Snout Pall, i. 264 ; Caligula's Bridge, i. 128 ; v. 348 ;
Canale della Guidecca, i. 357 ; Carew Castle, i. 264; Carthages,
the two, i. 128, v. 352 ; Castle Upnor, i. 263, 353 ; Chain Bridge
over the Tees, i. 363, 389 ; Chateau de la Belle Gabrielle, i. 389,
v. 66 ; Chateau of Prince Albert, i. 352 ; Cicero's Villa, i. 128,
133, 144, 145 ; Cliff from Bolton Abbey, iii. 321 ; Constance, i.
£61 ; Corinth, i. 263 ; Coventry, i. 251, 264 : Cowes, i. 264, 357,
£59 ; Crossing the Brook, i. 128, 167, 389 ; Daphne and Leucip-
pus, i. 197, 198 (note), 289, 295, iv. 2S5, v. 106; Dartmouth
(river scenery), i. 209 ; Dartmouth Cove (Southern Coast), i. 389 ;
Dazio Grande, i. 367 ; Departure of Regulus, i. 128 ; Devonport,
with the Dockyards, i. 156 (note), 356 ; Dragon of the Hesper-
ides, iii. 101, v. 323-328 ; Drawing of the spot where Harold fell,
ii. 196 ; Drawings of the Bivers of Prance, i. 126 ; Drawings of
Swiss Scenery, i. 124 ; Drawing of the Chain of the Alps of the
Superga above Turin, iii. 129 ; Drawing of Mount Pilate, iv.
223, 292, 293; Dudley, i. 169 (note), 265; Durham, i. 263, 389;
Dunbar, i. 370 ; Dunstaffnage, i. 258. 281 ; Ely, i. 404 ; Eton
College, i. 124; Fai'do, Pass of, iv. 20, 218; Fall of Carthage, i.
144, 167 ; Fall of Schaffhausen, v. 178, 353 (note) ; Flight into
Egypt, i. 239 ; Fire at Sea, v. 200 (note) ; Folkestone, i. 239, 264 ;
Fort Augustus, i. 300 ; Fountain of Fallacy, i. 128 ; Fowey Har-
bour, i. 262, 370, v. 152 (note) ; Florence, i. 129 ; Glencoe, i. 281 ;
Goldau (a recent drawing), i. 260 (note); Goldau, i. 362, iv. 307,
308, v. 353 (note) ; Golden Bongh, iv. 285 ; Gosport, i. 254 ; Great
Yarmouth, i. 377 (note) ; Hannibal passing the Alps, i. 127 ;
Hampton Court, i. 175 ; Hero and Leander, i. 128, 174, 239, 369,
403, v. 200 (note) ; Holy Isle, iii. 317 ; Illustration to the Anti-
quary, 260; Inverarv, v. 70; Isola Bella, iii. 129; Ivy Bridge,
i. 130; Jason, ii. 168, iii. 127; Juliet and her Nurse, i. 132, 134
(note), 265; Junction of the Greta and Tees, i. 367, iv. 303;
Kenilworth, i. 264; Killie-Crankie, i. 366; Kilgarren, i. 124;
Kirby Lonsdale Churchyard, i. 2(53, 389, iv. 14, 308; Lancaster
Sands, i. 335; Land's End, i. 248 (note), 250, 347, 370, 372;
Laueharne, i. 370 ; Llanberis, i. 91, 264, v. 336 (note) (English
series) ; Llanthony Abbey, i. 124, 169 (note), 248, 317, 366; Long
Ship's Lighthouse, i. 250 ; Lowestoft, i. 263, 347, 377 (note) ;
Lucerne, iv. 223 ; " Male Bolge " (of the Splugen and St. Goth-
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 483
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
ard, iv. 308 ; Malvern, i. 264 ; Marly, i. 79, 393 ; Mercury and
Argus, i. 142, 103, 1(59 (note), 195, 218, 314, 319, 366, v. 02 ;
Modern Italy, i. 129, 169 (note), iv. 266 ; Morecambe Bay, i.
255 ; Mount Lebanon, i. 289 ; Murano, view of, i. 135 ; Napo-
leon, i. 149, 158, 160, 167, 218, 264, 306, v. 128, 350 (note) ; Na-
poleon at St. Helena, iv. 308; Narcissus and Echo, v. 315;
Nemi, i. 264 : Nottingham, i. 264, 354, iv. 28 ; Oakhampton, i.
124, 254, 263, 394; Oberwesel, i. 264, 301; Orford, Suffolk, 1.
263; Ostend, i. 374; Palestrina, i. 129: Pas-de-Calais, i. 334,
374 ; Penmaen Mavvr, i. 319 ; Picture of the Deluge, i. 342 ;
Pools of Solomon, i. 233, 264, v. 126 ; Port Ruysdael, i. 374 ; Py-
ramid of Caius Cestins, i. 264 ; Python, v. 330, 332 ; Rape of
Proserpine, i. 129; Rheinfels, v. 351 (note); Rhymer's Glen, i.
366 ; Richmond (Middlesex), i. 264 ; Richmond (Yorkshire), i.
258. iv. 15, v. 106 ; Rome from the Forum, i. 331, v. 353 ; Salis-
bury, v. 154 ; Saltash, i. 264, 353 ; San Benedetto, looking to-
ward Fusina, i. 357, 135, v. 128 ; Scarborough, iii. 125 ; Shores
of Wharf e, iv. 244 : Shylock, i. 218, 263 ; Sketches in National
Gallery, v. 175. 196; Sketches in Switzerland, i. 135; Slave
Ship, i. 132, 134 (note), 144, 149, 167, 258, 2(54, ii. 292, iv. 308, v.
152, 353; Snowstorm, i. 127, 167, 347, v. 359 (note); St. Goth-
ard, iv. 25. 2S6, 294 ; St. Herbert's Isle, i. 265 ; St. Michael's
Mount, i. 258, 260 ; Stonehenge, i. 257, 264, v. 154 (English
series) ; Study (Block of Gneiss at Chamouni), iii. 129 ; Study
(Psestum), v. 155 ; Sun of Venice going to Sea, i. 135. 356 ;
Swiss Fribourg, iii. 129; Tantallon Castle, i. 373: Tees (Upper
^ Fall of), i. 315, 319, 362, iv. 303 ; Tees (Lower Fall of), i. 317,
366 ; Temptation on the Mountain (Illustration to Milton), ii.
205 ; Temple of Jupiter, i. 128, iii. 317 ; Temple of Minerva, v.
155 ; Tenth Pla°rue of Egypt, i. 128, v. 311 (note), 315 ; The Old
Temeraire, i. 132, iv. 308, v. 12S. 305 ; Tivoli, i. 129 ; Towers of
Heve, i. 265 ; Trafalgar, v. 3 5 : Trematon Castle, i. 265 ; Ulles-
water, i. 318, 353, iv. 303 ; Ulysses and Polypheme, iv. 303, v.
353 (note) ; various vignettes, i. 263 ; Venices, i. 107. 263, v. 353,
354 ; Walhalla, i. 134 (note) ; Wall Tower of a Swiss Town, iv.
68; Warwick, i. 264, 389; Waterloo, i. 25S, 265; Whitby, iii.
317; Wilderness of Engedi, i. 198 (note), 264; Winchelsea (Eng-
lish series), i. 168 (note), 264 ; Windsor, from Eton, i. 124 ; Wy-
cliffe, near Rokeby, iv. 303.
Finden's Bible Series :— Babylon, i. 232; Bethlehem, i. 239;
Mount' Lebanon, i. 2S9, v. 155 ; Sinai, v. 155 ; Pyramids of
Egypt, i. 239 ; Pool of Solomon, i. 233, v. 126 ; Fifth Plague of
Egypt, i. 128, v. 315.
Illustrations to Campbell :— Hohenlinden, i. 263 : Second Vig-
nette, i. 254 ; The Andes, i. 273 ; Vignette to the Beech- Tree's
Petition, i. 174 ; Vignette to Last Man, i. 268.
Illustrations to Rogers' " Italv : " — Amalfi, i. 235; Aosta, i.
273; Battle of Marengo, i. 269, 281; Farewell, i. 281; Lake of
Albano, i. 264 ; Lake of Como, i. 234 ; Lake of Geneva, i. 235, 263 ;
Lake of Lucerne, i. 259. 361 ; Perugia, i. 174 ; Piacenza, i. 264,
292; Passtum, i. 256, 264; Second Vignette, i. 260, 367; The
Great St. Bernard, i. 260 ; Vignette to St. Maurice, i. 260, 361
(note), v. 136.
Illustrations to Rogers' " Poems : " — Bridge of Sighs, i. 265 ;
Datur Hora Quieti, i. 143, 264, v. 178 ; Garden opposite title-page,
i, 174; Jacqueline, i, 273, ii. 205; Loch Lomond, i. 3(50; Rialto,
i. 239, 265; Sunset behind Willows, i. 145; Sunrise, i. 209; Sun-
rise on the Sea, i. 219, 259; the Alps at Daybreak, i. 220, 259, 2(53,
272; Vignette to Human Life, i. 263; Vignette to Slowly along
the Evening Sky, i. 210 ; Vignette to the Second Part of Jacque-
line, ii. 205; Villa of Galileo, i. 129; Voyage of Columbus, i. 239,
263, ii. 196.
Illustrations to Scott :— Armstrong's Tower, i. 175 ; Chicfswood
Cottage, i. 389; Derwentwater, i. 360 ; Drybur^h, 1.861; Dun-
staffnage, i. 258, 281 ; Glencoe, i. 281, 289 ; Loch Archray, i. 281 ;
484
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED.
Loch Coriskin, i. 249. 288, iv. 216 ; Loch Katrine, i. 289, 360 ;
Melrose, i. 361 ; Skiddaw, i. 263, 300.
Liber Studiorum : — iEsacus and Hesperie, i. 127, 394 (note),
ii. 159 ; Ben Arthur, i. 123, iv. 302, 303 ; Blair Athol, i. 388 ;
Cephalus and Procris, i. 388, 394 (note), ii. 157, 203, iii. 324, v.
350 ; Chartreuse, i. 125, 388. iii. 324 ; Chepstow, v. 350 ; Domes-
tic subjects of L. S., i. 125 ; Dunstan borough, v. 350 ; Foliage of
L. S., i. 126 ; Garden of Hesperides, iii. 317, v. 316 ; Gate of Win-
chelsea Wall, v. 350 ; Raglan, v. 350 ; Rape of Europa, v. 350 ;
Via Mala. v. 351 (note), iv. 254 ; Isis, v. 182, 183 ; Hedging and
Ditching, i. 125, 388, v. 349 ; Jason, i. 128, ii. 166, 193, iii. 324 ;
Juvenile Tricks, i. 388 ; Lauffenbourg, i. 125, iii. 324, v. 182 ;
Little Devil's Bridge, i. 124, iv. 25 ; Llanberis, i. 255 ; Mer de
Grlace, i. 123, 282, iv. 186 ; Mill near Grande Chartreuse, iv. 254,
v. 349 ; Morpeth Tower, v. 350 ; Mont St. Gothard. i. 124, 307
(note) ; Peat Bog, iii. 324, v. 349 ; Rivaulx choir, v. 350 ; Rizpah,
i. 127, iii. 324, iv. 14, v. 311, 350 ; Solway Moss, iii. 324 ; Source
of Avernon, iv. 302, v. 86 ; Study of the Lock, iv. 7, v. 349 ;
Young Anglers, v. 349 ; Water Mill, v. 349.
Rivers of Prance, i. 126 : Amboise, i. 180, 264 : Amboise (the
• Chateau), i. 180 ; Beaugency. i. 180 ; Blois, i. ISO ; Blois (Cha-
teau de), i. 180, 198, 264 ; Caudebec, i. 264, 298, 361 ; Chateau
Gaillard, i. 180 ; Clairmont, i. 264, 299 ; Confluence of the Seine
and Marne, i. 359 ; Drawings oP, i. 127 ; Havre, i. 220 ; Honflear,
i. 299 ; Jumieges, i. 247, 359 ; La Chaise de Gargantua, i. 359 ;
Loire, i. 358; Mantes, i. 265; Mauves, i. 299; Montjan, i. 264;
Orleans, i. 180 ; Quilleboeuf, i. 372, 166 ; Reitz, near Saumur, v.
168, 169 ; Rouen, i. 495, v. 127 ; Rouen, from St. Catherine's Hill,
i. 237, 361 ; St. Denis, i. 260, 265 ; St. Julien, i. 181, 265 ; The
Lantern of St. Cloud, i. 263 ; Troyes, i. 264 ; Tours, i. 181, 265 ;
Vernon, i. 359.
Yorkshire Series :— Aske Hall, i. 389, v. 75 ; Brignall Church,
i. 389 ; Hardraw Pall, iv. 303 ; Ingleborough, iv. 216 ; Greta, iv.
131, 244 ; Junction of the Greta and Tees, i. 318, 367, iv. 303 ;
Kirkby Lonsdale, i. 263, 389, iv. 14, 308 ; Richmond, i. 258, iv.
14, v. 41 ; Richmond Castle, iii. 236 ; Tees (Upper PaU of), i.
315, 31S, 362, iv. 303 ; Zurich, i. 362.
Uccello, Paul 1349 1432
Battle of Sant' Egidio, National Gallery, v. 5, 296.
TJwin 1783 1857
Vineyard Scene in the South of France, ii. 223.
Eng. Vanbrugh, Sir John (Blenheim and Castle
Howard) Architect 1672 1726
Dutch. Vandervelde, William (marine and battle) Painter 1610 1693
Dutch. Vandervelde, Adrian Landscape Pointer 1639 1672
Dutch. Vanderwerf, Adrian Historical Painter 1654 1718
Dutch. Vandervelde, the younger Painter 1633 1707
Reflection of, i. 353 ; waves of, iii. 831 ; Vessels Becalmed, No.
113, Dulwich Gallery, i. 336.
Mem. Vandyke, Sir Anthony (the greatest of
portrait painters) Portrait Painter 1598 1641
Plowers of, v. 97 ; delicacy of, v. 290 (note). Pictures — Portrait
of King Charles' Children, v. 97 ; the Knight, v. 288 (note).
Ital. Vannucchi, or And
Ital. Van Vitelli, Louis,
Ital. Vasari, George (a b
Sic. Vasi, Joseph, a des:
Span.
Fr.
Fr.
Am.
Ital.
5 M. P., 333 (note).
1488
1530
.Architect
1700
1773
Architect & Painter
1512
1574
1710
1782
1599
1660
1714
1789
Historical Painter.
1813
1844
1532
1588
Chiaroscuro of, iii. 36, iv. 39-45 ; colour in the shadows of, iv.
45 ; delicacy of, iii. 39 ; influence of hills upon, iv. 350 ; love of
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX.
485
NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. EOKN. DIED,
physical beauty, iii. 34 ; mystery about the pencilling of, iv. 59 ;
no sympathy with the tragedy and horror of the world, iv. 14 ;
sincerity of manner, iii. 42 : symbolism of, iii. 100 ; treatment of
the open sky, ii. 42 ; tree drawing of, v. 72 ; foreground of, v. 97 ;
religion of, (love casting out fear), v. 235 ; animal painting, com-
pared with Landseer's, ii. 198. Pictures — Entombment, ii. 43 ;
Magdalen washing the feet of Christ, iii. 20, 31 ; Marriage in
Cana, iii. 126, iv. 63, v. 208, 233, 235 ; two fresco figures at Ven-
ice, i. 108 ; Supper at Emmaus, iii. 31, 62 ; Queen of Sheba, v.
preface, vii. 238 ; Family of Veronese, v. 235-237 ; Holy Family,
v. 239 ; Veronica, v. 239 ; Europa, v. 97, 182 ; Triumph of Ven-
ice, v. 181 ; Family of Darius, National Gallery, v. 200.
Ital. Verrochio, And'w (inventor of the method
of taking the features in a plaster
mould) Sculptor 1422 1488
Eng. Vertue, George (500 plates) Engraver 1884 1756
Ital. Vignola, James (Caprarola palace and St.
Peter's) Architect 1507 1573
Ital. Vinci, Leonardo da Painter 1452 1519
Chiaroscuro of, iv. 45 (and note) ; completion of detail by, iii.
126 ; drapery of, iv. 46 ; finish of, ii. 82, iii. 267 ; hatred of fog,
iv. 53 ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119 ; influence
of hills upon, iv. 351 ; landscape of, i. 86 ; love of beauty, iii. 42 ;
rocks of, iii. 245 ; system of contrast of masses, iv. 41. Pictures
— Angel, ii. 173 ; Cenacolo, ii. 210 ; Holy Familv (Louvre), i. 86 ;
Last Supper, iii. 28, 347 ; St. Anne, iv. 296, iii. 126.
Gr. Vitruvius (temp. Augustus) Architect f. B. c. 30
Ital. Volpato, John Engraver 1733 1802
Fr. Vouet, Simon, founder of French school
(temp. Charles I.) Painter 1582 1649
Fr. Wailly, Charles de Architect 1729 1798
Wallis
Snow scenes of, i. 281 (note).
Eng. Warren, Charles (perfecter of engraving
Amer. West, Benjamin.
. Engraver
1823
1738
1820
Familiar Life Painter.
..1785
1841
Landscape Painter
1713
1782
Engraver
.1735
1785
1668
Eng. Wilson, Richard
Eng. Woollet, William
Dutch. Wouvermans, Philip
Leaves of, v. 40 ; landscape of, v. 207 ; vulgarity of, v. 293, 297 ;
contrast between, and Angelico, v. 298. Pictures referred to —
Landscape, with hunting party, v. 293 ; Battle piece, with bridge,
v. 295.
Eng. Wren, Sir Christopher (St. Paul's, &c.). . .Architect 1632 1723
Eng. Wyatt, James (Pantheon, Kew Palace, hc,)Architect 1743 1813
Ital. Zablia, Nicholas Architect 1674 1750
Gr. Zeuxis, a celebrated ancient Painter b. c. 490 b. c. 400
Picture of Centaur, v. 273.
Ger. Zincke Enamel Portrait Pa 1684 1767
Ital. Zuccaro, or Zucchero, Taddeo Painter 1 529 1 566
Ital. Zuccaro, or Zucchero, Frederigo Painter 1539 1610
Ital. ZuccareUi Painter. 1710 1788
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